How Job Risk and Human Capital Shape Male Lifetime Earnings Disparities
Ozkan, Serdar; Marks, Cassandra (2023-01-19)
Higher unemployment risk and fewer outside job offers appear to be key reasons why some men end up at the bottom of the lifetime earnings distribution for male workers.
On the Economy

Working Paper
Racial Wealth Disparities: Reconsidering the Roles of Human Capital and Inheritance
Sabelhaus, John Edward; Thompson, Jeffrey P. (2021-09-01)
In this paper, we present updated measures of racial disparities in wealth using the most recent data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), augmented by household-level estimates of defined benefit (DB) pension wealth developed by Sabelhaus and Volz (2020). Including this important asset, we find that racial wealth disparities are smaller than the numbers typically discussed in other research or in the media, but the disparities remain substantial. The paper proceeds by exploring two specific factors that have long been identified as playing potentially important roles in generating ...
Working Papers , Paper 22-3

Report
The Limited Role of Intergenerational Transfers for Understanding Racial Wealth Disparities
Sabelhaus, John Edward; Thompson, Jeffrey P. (2023-03-07)
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

Job Mobility Patterns and Lifetime Earnings Disparities among Male Workers
Ozkan, Serdar; Marks, Cassandra (2023-01-17)
Examining long-term wage growth of male workers, an analysis finds that job mobility can provide insights into the disparities in lifetime earnings distribution.
On the Economy

Working Paper
Decomposing Lifetime-Earnings Differences between White, Black, and Hispanic Families
Bodenschatz, Hope; Daniels Jr., Gerald Eric; Thompson, Jeffrey P. (2023-10-01)
This paper explores disparities between White, Black, and Hispanic families using a measure of lifetime earnings developed by Jacobs et al. (2022) for the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Lifetime earnings are a particularly important measure of well-being, with relevance for wealth accumulation among other economic and social outcomes, but they are under-studied in the context of racial disparities. We describe how the different components of lifetime earnings— including annual earnings of workers, number of working household members, and number of years of employment during the working ...
Working Papers , Paper 23-14

Work More, Make Much More? The Relationship between Lifetime Hours Worked and Lifetime Earnings
Bick, Alexander; Blandin, Adam; Rogerson, Richard (2024-03-12)
An analysis suggests that the hours that male workers spend on the job over a career is associated with both higher lifetime earnings and higher earnings growth.
On the Economy