How Important Is Precautionary Saving?
利用PSID数据估计收入不确定性对家庭财富的贡献，发现样本中39%到46%的财富可归因于部分家庭面临的额外不确定性。
We estimate how much of the wealth of a sample of PSID respondents is held because some households face more income uncertainty than others. We begin by solving a theoretical model of saving, which we use to develop appropriate measures of uncertainty. We then regress measures of wealth on our measures of uncertainty, and find evidence that households engage in precautionary saving. Finally, we simulate the wealth distribution that our empirical results imply would prevail if all households had the same uncertainty as the lowest-uncertainty group. We find that between 39 and 46 percent of wealth in our sample is attributable to the extra uncertainty that some consumers face compared to the lowest-uncertainty group.