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The Life Cycle in Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

J. R. Kearl  and
Clayne L. Pope
J. R. Kearl
Affiliation:
Associate Professors of Economics, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602
Clayne L. Pope
Affiliation:
Associate Professors of Economics, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602
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Abstract

The life cycles of income and wealth form important traces of the economic history of households. Comparisons of cross-sectional estimates of the age-wealth profiles from 1774 to 1962 reveal little change in the basic pattern although crosssectional age-income or earnings profiles peak later in modern periods because of the increased investment in human capital.The wealth-income ratio appears to be declining. Multivariate regressions for Utah households show wealth-income patterns consistent with a life cycle model based on smoothing of consumption with little interaction between age and other determinants of economic position. Foreign birth has a positive effect on income while reducing wealth.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 149 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1983

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References

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3 For contemporary examples see Chez, Gilbert and Becker, Gary, The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle (New York, 1975);Google ScholarModigliani, Franco and Ando, Albert, “Tests of the Life Cycle Hypothesis of Savings,” Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics 19 (05 1957), 99–124;Google ScholarShorrocks, A. F., “The Age-Wealth Relationship: A Cross-Section and Cohort Analysis,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 57 (05 1975), 155–63;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBen-Porath, Yoram, “The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings,” Journal of Political Economy, 75 (06/08 1967), 352–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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12 Compare Soltow, Men and Wealth, p. 80,Google Scholar to Kearl, J. R., Pope, Clayne L., and Wimmer, Larry T., “Household Wealth in Utah: 1850–1870,” this Journal, 40 (09 1980), 489.Google Scholar

13 Kearl, J. R. and Pope, Clayne L., “Intergenerational Effects on the Distribution of Income and Wealth: The Utah Experience,” NBER working Paper No. 754 (Sep. 1981).Google Scholar