Are Rising Wage Profiles a Forced-Saving Mechanism?

This paper tests the hypothesis that rising earnings profiles are a mechanism by which individuals engage in forced saving. It does this by examining the cross-sectional relationship between overwithholding on income tax payments--behavior that is consistent with a preference for forced saving--and the slopes of age-earnings profiles. The force-saving hypothesis receives some support from earnings regression estimates. Individuals who receive tax refunds are on earnings profiles that are steeper and have lower intercepts, although the evidence is statistically significant in only a subset of the specifications estimated. On average, individuals who receive refunds have about one percentage point faster earnings growth per year