We assess the importance of the precautionary saving motive by relying on a direct question about precautionary wealth … the amount of desired precautionary wealth. This allows us to bound the amount of precautionary accumulation and to … virtually every type of household. Even though this motive does not give rise to large amounts of wealth for young and middle …

increases the precautionary saving motive around levels of wealth where the constraint becomes binding. Second, we provide a …

models, including the existence of a target level of wealth and the proposition that aggregate consumption growth equals …

that precautionary savings account for less than ten percent of total wealth for both business owners and non … motive. Since business owners hold larger amounts of wealth than other households for non-precautionary reasons and also face … highly volatile income, they induce a correlation between wealth and income risk regardless of whether or not a precautionary …

This paper estimates reduced form retirement and wealth equations, and analyzes the relationship between them. Data are … model of retirement and wealth. To improve retirement analysis, we develop the premium value, a measure of the future value …

wealth accumulation is to finance future consumption, either their own or that of heirs. The paper concludes that the … simplest model that explains the relevant facts is one in which either consumers regard the accumulation of wealth as an end in … itself, or unspent wealth yields a flow of services (such as power or social status) which have the same practical effect on …