The life-cycle patterns of consumption, wage and hours inequality observed in U.S. cross-section data are commonly viewed as incompatible with a Pareto efficient allocation. We determine the extent to which these qualitative and quantitative patterns can or cannot be produced by Pareto efficient...

Mean earnings and measures of earnings dispersion and skewness all increase in US data over most of the working life-cycle for a typical cohort as the cohort ages. We show that a benchmark human capital model can replicate these properties from the right distribution of initial human capital and...