This paper finds robust evidence that age structure matters for subsequent growth in per capita income across the US states 1920-1990. The age groups 25-65 year are positively related to subsequent per capita income growth. Another conclusion is that the average years of schooling affects...

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...

Is lifetime inequality mainly due to differences across people established early in life or to differences in luck experienced over the working lifetime? We answer this question within a model that features idiosyncratic shocks to human capital, estimated directly from data, as well as...