We examine changes in inequality and instability of the combined earnings of married couples over the 1980-2009 period using two U.S. panel data sets: Social Security earnings data matched to Survey of Income and Program Participation panels (SIPP-SSA) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics....

U.S. consumption has gone through steep ups and downs since 2000, but the causes of these fluctuations are still imperfectly identified. We quantify the relative statistical impact of income, unemployment, house prices, credit scores, debt, expectations, foreclosures, inequality, and...

Using individual-level credit reports merged with loan-level mortgage data, we estimate how mobility relates to home equity when labor markets are weak or strong. We control for constant individual-specific traits with fixed effects and find that homeowners with negative home equity move to...