We study the dynamics of the distribution of wealth in an overlapping generation economy with …nitely lived agents and inter-generational transmission of wealth. Financial markets are incomplete, exposing agents to both labor and capital income risk. We show that the stationary wealth distribution is a Pareto distribution in the right tail and that it is capital income risk, rather than labor i...

This paper reports a test of the relative income rank hypothesis of depression, according to which it is the rank position of an individual's income amongst a comparison group, rather than the individual's absolute income, that will be associated with depressive symptoms. A new methodology is developed to test between psychosocial and material explanations of why income relates to well-being. T...

The Effects of Wealth and Income on Subjective Well-Being and Ill-Being The accepted view among psychologists and economists alike is that household income has statistically significant but only small effects on measures of subjective well-being. Income, however, is clearly an imperfect measure of the economic circumstances of households. Using data drawn from the 2001 and 2002 waves of the Hou...

Recent research has demonstrated clear racial inequalities in wealth ownership, but the research is less certain about why these differences exist . Evidence that black wealth ownership, in particular, falls short of white wealth ownership has amassed at an increasing rate. In 1992, while median black income was about 60 percent of median white income, median net worth for blacks was only 8 per...

This Review presents basic facts regarding the long-run evolution of income and wealth inequality in Europe and the United States. Income and wealth inequality was very high a century ago, particularly in Europe, but dropped dramatically in the first half of the 20th century. Income inequality has surged back in the United States since the 1970s so that the United States is much more unequal th...

Events of recent years have revived interest in whether wealth effects exist in consumption. Recent studies have obtained contrasting results on wealth effects. Findings and procedures across studies can be categorized as falling in to the "Endogenous Consumption" and "Endogenous Wealth" groups. This paper examines the long-run and short-run dynamic relationship between aggregate consumption, r...

A recent paper based on the standard model of health insurance take-up finds that 25% to 75% of the uninsured appear to be able to afford insurance. However, the standard model only uses current income to approximate family wealth. In this paper, we examine family wealth and asset holdings across the uninsured and insured in the 2002 MEPS. We find that the standard model severely overestimates ...

Children (N = 267, ages 8-14 years, M = 11.61 years, middle to upper-middle income) made predictions regarding groups of same-aged peers from high-wealth and low-wealth backgrounds. The context involved granting access to a special opportunity. From middle childhood to early adolescence children increasingly expected both high- and low-wealth groups to want access to opportunities for their own...

OBJECTIVES This study aimed to verify the association between wealth or income level and health status after adjusting for other socio-economic position (SEP) indicators among Korean adults aged 45 and over. METHODS Data were obtained from the 1st wave of Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing (households: 6,171, persons: 10,254). We used self-rated health status and activities of daily living (...