This article examines the family income and the household wealth and income of old old persons. Subgroups of the old old are compared and the old old are compared with the young old. When the old old group is separated into three subgroups--widows living alone, other females, and males--the economic status of widows living alone is substantially below that of the other two subgroups. This diffe...

We study the dynamics of the distribution of overlapping generation economy with finitely lived agents and inter-generational transmission of wealth. Financial markets are incomplete, exposing agents to both labor income 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 income...

This paper presents an explicitly solved model of wealth distribution in an infinite-horizon incomplete-markets economy. The agent aims to hold a target level of wealth in order to partially buffer income shocks. The notion of buffering suggests that the agent’s wealth is less skewed and less fat-tailed than his income in the long run. Infinite-horizon setting implies that the cross-sectional j...

Commonly used consumption/saving models have radically different implications for households response to income shocks, ranging from the hands-to-mouth model, where consumption bears all the adjustment, to the complete markets model, where wealth bears all the adjustment. In this paper we use the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth, which is the only available micro dataset that conta...

The distributions of income and wealth in countries across the world are found to possess some robust and stable features independent of the specific economic, social and political conditions of the countries. We discuss a few physics-inspired multiagent dynamic models along with their microeconomic counterparts, that can produce the statistical features of the distributions observed in reality...

We examine the dynamics of wealth accumulation distribution in Italy using data drawn from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a representative survey of the Italian population conducted by the Bank of Italy. We compare survey data with national accounts data and discuss sample representativeness, attrition, and measurement issues. We then look at wealth inequality (the cross-sectional d...

I present an explicitly solved equilibrium model for the distribution of wealth and income in an incomplete-markets economy. I first propose a self-insurance model with an inter-temporally dependent preference [Uzawa, H. 1968. Time preference, the consumption function, and optimal asset holdings. In: Wolfe, J.N. (Ed.), Value, Capital, and Growth: Papers in Honour of Sir John Hicks. Edinburgh Un...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This study examines the independent effect of wealth, income, and education on stroke and how these disparities evolve throughout middle and old age in a representative cohort of older Americans. METHODS Stroke-free participants in the Health and Retirement Study (n=19,565) were followed for an average of 8.5 years. Total wealth, income, and education assessed at baseli...

This paper presents series on top shares of income and wealth in Spain using personal income and wealth tax return statistics. Top income shares are highest in the 1930s, fall sharply during the first decade of the Franco dictatorship, then remain stable and low till the 1980s, and have increased since the mid 1990s. The top 0.01% income share in Spain estimated from income tax data is comparab...

BACKGROUND Noncommunicable diseases are an increasing health concern worldwide, but particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study quantified and compared education- and wealth-based inequalities in the prevalence of five noncommunicable diseases (angina, arthritis, asthma, depression and diabetes) and comorbidity in low- and middle-income country groups. METHODS Using 2002-04 W...