Children and Life-Cycle Consumption
Open Access
- 19 January 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by MDPI AG in Journal of Risk and Financial Management
- Vol. 15 (2), 42
- https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15020042
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of children in explaining the life-cycle pattern of consumption (which is hump-shaped since it is higher in the middle of life and lower at the beginning and end of life). Unlike previous studies, a true panel of U.K. households was exploited to investigate whether currently childless households that anticipate having children behave differently from similar households that do not anticipate children. Spending for each group at different ages was estimated using a simple kernel regression. The paper finds that those households that anticipate children, when compared to households that do not anticipate children, do not seem to significantly reduce total spending before having children, nor do they significantly increase total spending after children arrive. Hence, children do not seem to fully explain the hump shape of consumption over the life-cycle.This publication has 19 references indexed in Scilit:
- Consumption and ChildrenThe Review of Economics and Statistics, 2009
- Life-Cycle Prices and ProductionAmerican Economic Review, 2007
- Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey DataThe Review of Economics and Statistics, 2007
- The Economics of Lesbian and Gay FamiliesJournal of Economic Perspectives, 2007
- Consumption versus ExpenditureJournal of Political Economy, 2005
- Consumption Over the Life CycleEconometrica, 2002
- The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and SavingJournal of Economic Perspectives, 2001
- Buffer-Stock Saving and the Life Cycle/Permanent Income HypothesisThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1997
- Saving and Liquidity ConstraintsEconometrica, 1991
- A Profitable Approach to Labor Supply and Commodity Demands over the Life-CycleEconometrica, 1985