We evaluate the importance of the precautionary saving motive by relying on a direct question about precautionary wealth from the 1995 and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances. In this survey, a new question has been designed to elicit the amount of desired precautionary wealth. This...

We assess the importance of the precautionary saving motive by relying on a direct question about precautionary wealth from the 1995 and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances. In this survey, a new question has been designed to elicit the amount of desired precautionary wealth. This...

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has a dual-frame sample design that supplements a standard area-probability frame with a sample of observations drawn from statistical records derived from tax returns. The tax-based frame is stratified on the basis of a "wealth index" constructed largely...

This chapter attempts to provide some evidence on two closely related issues. The first is the question of how well or how badly a typical nonmonetarist econometric structure can account for the dynamic pattern of wages and prices in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s. The second is...

This paper uses the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to examine pension coverage, estimate Social Security and pension wealth for U.S. households in 1989 and 1992, and to estimate the effects of pension wealth on non-pension net worth. As expected, the SCF data show that including pensions and...

We assess the importance of the precautionary saving motive by relying on a direct question about precautionary wealth from the 1995 and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances. In this survey, a new question has been designed to elicit the amount of desired precautionary wealth. This...