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JEL Classification:D31 

Working Paper
Uninsured risk, stagnation, and fiscal policy

Japan is in the midst of a protracted spell of depressed economic activity. Japan's economic stagnation has occurred against a background of rising earnings risk. Occupational stability is falling as routine occupations disappear and implicit lifetime employment guarantees are gradually disappearing. At the same time, earnings in some high-skilled occupations have continued to grow. The resulting polarization in earnings has also been accompanied by an increase in wealth inequality. We develop a framework that relates these observations. In our model, an increase in uninsured earnings risk ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2016-4

Working Paper
Did the 2017 Tax Reform Discriminate against Blue State Voters?

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) made significant changes to corporate and personal federal income taxation, including limiting the SALT (state and local property, income and sales taxes) deductibility to $10,000. States with high SALT tend to vote Democratic. This paper estimates the differential effect of the TCJA on red- and blue-state taxpayers and investigates the importance of the SALT limitation to this differential. We calculate the effect of permanent implementation of the TCJA on households using The Fiscal Analyzer: a life-cycle, consumption-smoothing program incorporating ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2019-7

Report
A New Look at Racial Disparities Using a More Comprehensive Wealth Measure

Most research measuring disparities in wealth by race relies on data that exclude resources that are disproportionately important to low-wealth and non-white families, namely defined benefit (DB) pensions and Social Security. This paper finds that once these resources are included, disparities in wealth between white families and Black and Hispanic families are substantially smaller and that they are not rising over time. The powerful equalizing roles of DB pensions and Social Security highlighted here are further motivation for maintaining their fiscal health. This paper also presents ...
Current Policy Perspectives

Report
The Limited Role of Intergenerational Transfers for Understanding Racial Wealth Disparities

Transfers of wealth between generations—whether through inheritances or inter vivos gifts—are less important in explaining racial disparities in wealth than might be expected. While this factor looms large in the media’s discussions of racial inequality, it explains relatively little of the disparities evident in the data. One reason is that most people, regardless of race, receive no inheritance or other transfer of substantial value. In addition, most recipients of inheritances ultimately consume those bequests and do not plan to leave substantial gifts to their offspring. Further, ...
Current Policy Perspectives

Report
Credit Card Spending and Borrowing since the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Consumers improved their financial health early during the COVID-19 pandemic, but credit card revolving and delinquencies have been rising since 2021, in terms of both the share of accounts and average balances. Financial stress is especially high among lower-income cardholders, whose credit card revolving and delinquencies have risen faster than those of other income cohorts. This is consistent with excess savings being depleted faster among lower-income cohorts. The rising financial stress suggests a weakening in consumption as utilization rates, revolving amounts, and delinquencies all ...
Current Policy Perspectives

Briefing
Cliff notes: the effects of the 2013 debt-ceiling crisis

We investigate the effects of the 2013 debt-ceiling crisis on the Treasury bill market and possible spillovers to the commercial paper market and money market funds. We also compare this experience with the prior debt-ceiling crisis in 2011. We find that the 2013 debt-ceiling crisis reduced the demand for Treasury bills that were scheduled to mature right after the debt-ceiling deadline, but not for longer-term Treasury bills. Accordingly, we see that a hump formed at the shorter end of the term structure of Treasury bill yields around the debt-ceiling deadline, with the term structure ...
Public Policy Brief

Working Paper
Do the Rich Really Save More? Answering an Old Question Using the Survey of Consumer Finances with Direct Measures of Lifetime Earnings and an Expanded Wealth Concept

The question of whether affluent households save at a higher rate than other parts of the distribution has been asked by economists on numerous occasions since the 1950s. It is standard in this research to define affluent, or “rich,” households as those with high lifetime earnings or income to better ground the empirical question in relevant theory. However, results in the literature are mixed regarding whether rich households in fact save more than others, with some studies suggesting a generally flat saving-rate profile across the distribution and others supporting the notion that the ...
Working Papers , Paper 25-12

Working Paper
Accounting for racial wealth disparities in the United States

Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, this paper updates and extends previous research on the racial wealth gap in the United States. We explore several hypotheses that help explain differential wealth accumulation by racial groups, including the importance of receiving inheritances and other financial support from relatives and the conditions in local real estate markets. By exploring the disparities among white, black, and Hispanic families, we make new contributions to the literature. We find that observable factors account for the entire wealth gap between white and Hispanic ...
Working Papers , Paper 19-13

Working Paper
Family characteristics and macroeconomic factors in U. S. intragenerational family income mobility, 1978–2014

Family economic mobility has been a policy concern for decades, with interest heating up further since the 1990s. Using data that tracks individual families? incomes during overlapping 10-year periods from 1978 through 2014, this paper investigates the relationships of factors ? family characteristics and macro influences ? to intragenerational mobility and whether the importance of those factors has changed over time. Family characteristics include both levels of work behavior and family structure and within-period changes in those factors, as well as time-invariant characteristics of the ...
Working Papers , Paper 19-1

Working Paper
The impact of migration on earnings inequality

This paper examines the impact of migration on earnings inequality using 1940?2015 data from the U.S. census and American Community Survey. Despite measurement challenges, I successfully replicate existing findings regarding national trends in earnings inequality and migration, and subsequently analyze regional and state patterns. Using 1940 birthplace information to instrument for migration, I find that recent immigration mildly increases the top decile earnings share, while recent in-migration and out-migration have no significant effects on such inequality. I estimate that immigration ...
Working Papers , Paper 19-5

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Thompson, Jeffrey P. 13 items

Athreya, Kartik B. 12 items

Mather, Ryan 11 items

Mustre-del-Río, José 11 items

Sánchez, Juan M. 11 items

Volz, Alice Henriques 10 items

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