The Saving Behaviour of a Two-person Household

The facts that wives are typically younger than their husbands and that women typically live longer than men imply that wives may have more incentive to save for old age than do husbands. A theoretical model of the determination of household saving and portfolio choice is introduced which takes into account differences in preferences for saving. The most important result is that the level and the composition (portfolio) of saving and the time path of consumption are dependent on the distribution of income within the household.
JEL classification: D 1; D 7     

The labor-force participation of married women in the Soviet Union: a household cross-section analysis

Approximately 80% of women in the Soviet Union ages 15-54 years are employed outside the home. To identify the impact of demographic and economic variables on the high rate of labor force participation among Soviet women, data from an income survey of 1016 2-parent families of emigrants to Israel were analyzed. It was hypothesized that differences in participation rates among Soviet women correspond to differences in other sources of family income, wage rates and market conditions, level of education, and family household conditions, with response to changes in economic variables mediated by the role played by persuasion and social pressure in encouraging women to participate. Overall, 89.3% of the women in the sample were labor force participants. Nonparticipants were, as expected, from families with higher levels of other income. The personal qualifications of nonworking wives were considerably lower than those of working wives, with nonworking wives averaging 9.4 years of schooling compared with 13.2 years for working wives. Offered wages for working wives averaged 69 kopecks/hour in contrast to 40-50 kopecks/hour for nonworking women. A maximum-likelihood functional estimation of participation rates whoed significant coefficients for family income (negative), expected wages and education (positive), and residence in a large city (positive). The coefficients for residence in a medium-sized city, existence of a private plot, presence of nonworking men in the household, occupational status of the husband, and total number of children were insignificant. The supply of hours of work was backward-bending. The results suggest that Soviet women reach the decision to participate in the labor force through consideration of the same factors as their counterparts in nonsocialist countries. The analysis further indicates that, at present levels of fertility and exogenous conditions, the participation rate in the Soviet Union will not decrease. However, policies designed to raise the fertility level, including better facilities for children and more support for women who leave the labor force to raise young children, could ease labor force participation among soviet women.     

林业重点工程对样本农户收入不平等影响的分解与分析

本文采用15个案例县的1995—2006年3 096个样本数据分析林业重点工程对农民收入不平等及其影响程度的作用机理。研究结果显示:(1)在1995—2006年的12年间,样本农户的收入结构发生了重大变化,林业重点工程补贴收入提高了8.03个百分点;(2)林业重点工程补贴收入对样本农户收入的基尼系数的贡献呈现上升态势,从1995年的0.330 7%上升到2006年的3.794 1%;(3)林业工程收入格局与国家工程区域规划有密切关系,工程政策的影响更为显著。因此,适当调整林业重点工程政策可以更好地实现农村扶贫的目标。     

基于主体视角的国民收入分配格局研究——对中、日两国的实证比较

国民收入在居民、企业和政府之间的分配格局合理与否决定着居民福利水平的提高、企业的持续发展和公共服务的持续发展能否协调共进。中国与日本的国民收入分配格局存在着明显的差异。与日本相比,在国民收入初次分配和再分配中,中国住户部门的所得份额明显偏低,而企业部门和政府部门所得份额明显偏高,中国的国民收入分配格局存在着明显的向企业和政府倾斜的倾向。这对国内消费需求的增长、居民生活水平的提高和产业结构的升级都产生了不利的影响,应该采取提高劳动者报酬收入在国民收入初次分配中的比重、减轻居民税收负担、增加政府对居民的转移支出、放松对企业向职工提供补助和福利的管制等措施,提高居民在国民收入分配中的比重。     

皖西北平原地区农业劳动与非农业劳动报酬调查

使用家庭日记帐的方法统计农户的总收入、农业劳动时间和非农业劳动时间，然后对它们进行回归分析，得出的结论是，农户从事1小时的农业劳动（包括种植业和养殖业）所带来的家庭总收入的增加为21．9元，而从事1小时的非农业劳动（外出务工）的报酬是1．72元.     

Wives' motives and fertility

This analysis assumes that childhood learning has a strong impact on the measured motivations of adults. This study uses responses among 354 White married women in 1976 to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Wives' responses to four pictures are expected to mirror the following four typologies: affiliation imagery (AFF), power imagery (POW), power and affiliation imagery (POWAF), and without references to affiliation or power (CULT). CULT is presumed to reflect the motivation of the wife in the average family. Expected relationships between these root motives and fertility are identified. Findings show that families with persuasive affiliative wives allocated more time to child care and had lower family incomes than other families. AFF wives worked fewer hours per week than other wives and allocated more time per child than other wives. Husbands helped them with child care sometimes or often. Households sacrificed material possessions for children. Findings did not support the inference that low income was due to husband's low earnings but did support the inference that low income might be due to the wives' short work week. The logistic model that controls for hours worked per week and number of years at the present job shows that wives were happiest in their marriage, if wives had high power motivation. Family income was a significant determinant of achievement satisfaction and not of affiliation satisfaction. Nerlove's hypothesis that there is an inverse relationship between wife's level of education and her taste for children was rejected. The wife's motivation toward her husband was an important factor that impacted on her preference for children and for work and her perceived level of utility. Wives who asserted themselves in socially acceptable situations (high in power motivations) were most likely to report having a happier than average marriage. Both affiliative and persuasive affiliative wives took satisfaction in their children's happiness and achievements.     

Income mobility and risk during the business cycle: Comparing adjustments in labour markets in two Latin-American countries

This paper uses panel data from Argentina and Mexico and a new measure of mobility ‐ the Gini index of mobility ‐ to answer three questions. First, is there a trend towards rising labour income mobility over time in these two countries? Second, is there a relationship between income mobility and growth common to both countries, or does that relationship depend on the institutional features of each country’s labour markets? Third, do we observe more labour income mobility within some groups such as the young and the less educated than within other groups? JEL classification: D31, E32, J63.     

健康问题研究中农户财富状况指标的构建——基于四川农户调查数据的分析

构建有效的农户财富状况指标是研究农村贫困和疾病问题的基础。本文利用一组数据,参照可持续生计的分析框架,构建以资产替代收入和消费来反映农户财富状况的指标。研究发现,农户财富状况指标比通常所用的村干部对农户经济状况的主观评价、农户收入及消费指标更能反映农户财富的动态状况;农户财富状况很大程度上依赖于农户的人力资本发展。本文最后对构建的农户财富状况指标优缺点及其在健康问题研究中的运用进行了讨论。     

Two‐sample nonparametric estimation of intergenerational income mobility in the United States and Sweden

We estimate intergenerational income mobility in the US and Sweden, using a new nonparametric approach. The approach addresses several empirical issues raised in the literature and applies when other estimators are infeasible. We argue that previous estimates of income mobility conceal the heterogeneous nature of the transmission mechanism by keeping mobility constant across families. The striking differences we find between mobility patterns across family backgrounds, captured by father's education, lead us to question the conventional result that intergenerational transmission of earnings is weaker in Sweden than in the United States, for important parts of the population.     

粮食主产区不同区位农户营粮贡献差异研究——基于河南农户的实证

采用河南省16村近5 000个农户2003—2007年固定跟踪观察所得的样本资料,实证分析不同区位农户的营粮贡献。结果表明:河南农户经济分化日益明显,存在一种粮食盈余户减少与粮食短缺户增多,粮食缺口量增大的局面。粮食安全保障主要依托于日趋减少的盈余户上,且区位差异显著。具有自然区位优势的农户营粮贡献较大,具有经济区位优势的农户营粮贡献呈现出强化与弱化的两极格局,而自然与经济区位交互作用下,农户营粮贡献的区位复合效应显现。     

Income segregation and local progressive taxation: Empirical evidence from Switzerland

This study investigates spatial income segregation in fiscally decentralized urban areas. The theoretical part proposes the progressivity of local income taxes as a new theoretical explanation for income segregation. The empirical part studies how income tax differentials across municipalities affect the households' location decisions. I use data from the Swiss metropolitan area of Basel that contains tax information on all moving households in 1997. The location choice of the households is investigated within the framework of the random utility maximization model. Different econometric specifications of the error term structure, such as conditional logit, nested logit and multinomial probit, are compared. The empirical results show that rich households are significantly and substantially more likely to move to low-tax municipalities than poor households. This result holds after controlling for alternative explanations of segregation. Social interactions and distance from the central business district are established as other major factors for income segregation. Households in general tend to choose locations close to other households like themselves.     

CROSS-NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN INCOME MOBILITY: EVIDENCE FROM CANADA, THE UNITED STATES, GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY

Using a standardized dataset, this paper compares the differences in income mobility among four countries—Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Germany—during the 1990s and early 2000s. The results suggest that, in general, there exist diverse levels of income mobility across the four countries. Although the precise magnitudes of the differences are sensitive to the measurement method used, incomes in Britain are by far the most mobile. Our findings also reveal country-specific driving forces that underlie income mobility. The stabilizing effects of government transfers are most pronounced in Canada. In Germany, it is the progressive tax system that offsets earnings variations and results in smaller changes in longitudinal incomes. Moreover, we also discover that demographic factors provided only limited explanation of differences in income mobility.     

Saving and the intra-household distribution of income: an empirical investigation

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between household saving and the distribution of income within the household. Various theoretical reasons why the level of saving might depend on the latter are given. Some of these can be rationalized within the usual “unitary” model of household decision but others recognize explicitly that different members of the household may have different preferences about how much to save.Particular attention is paid to saving for retirement since the facts that wives are, on average, younger than their husbands and women have longer life expectancies means that wives typically anticipate a longer retirement period than their husbands. Thus wives may prefer to save more for retirement than their husbands.The empirical analysis uses a sample of Canadian households from five Family Expenditure Surveys. These surveys include measures of financial saving as well saving in retirement accounts. After accounting for many of the other influences on saving (for example: age, household composition, occupation and education levels but not household income) we find some effects of the intra-household distribution of income on savings rates. The parameter estimates suggest that the household saving rate decreases with the share of the wife in household income.     

Spring cleaning: rural water impacts, valuation, and property rights institutions

Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water, which limits incentives for private investment. Spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66%, but household water quality improves less, due to recontamination. Child diarrhea falls by one quarter. Travel-cost based revealed preference estimates of households' valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners' valuations, and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic. We estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above-marginal-cost pricing, private property would function better at higher income levels or under water scarcity, and alternative institutions could yield Pareto improvements.     

我国宏观消费率变化的实证研究

我国宏观消费率的下降程度应从宏观经济均衡运行的角度来判断,我国宏观消费率的下降主要原因是居民平均消费倾向的下降,宏观消费率的提高主要应从改善微观收入分配、转变经济增长方式、发行国债刺激消费等方面着手.     

子女教育、代际支持与家庭贫困的变动

子女教育是影响农村家庭贫困变动的一个重要因素。通过对14省区609户农村家庭调查结果的分析,子女接受教育程度越高,自身一代家庭摆脱贫困的比例越高,并且能传承下代家庭使其免受贫困;家庭贫困代际变动的断裂点为15年(大专教育)。     

中国城镇居民的财产分配

本文利用住户调查数据对 1 995年的中国城镇住户的财产分配状况进行了经验分析 ,包括对财产分配的差距进行了测量 ,影响财产分配的主要因素进行了估计 ,并将中国城镇住户的财产分配进行了国际比较。与大部分市场经济国家相比 ,中国城镇居民之间财产分配的差距并不大。但是中国城镇居民的财产分配差距超过了收入分配差距 ,而且从长期趋势上可能会出现加速扩大的势头。中国城镇居民之间财产分配的不均等并非全是经济市场化过程的结果。一些不均等的原因来自于传统计划经济遗留下来的分配模式。本文还发现 ,在户主一生中财产积累出现了两个高峰值。这是与正统的生命周期理论不同的。本文还表明了财产分配和收入分配之间的较强相关性。     

How Much Income Mobility is There in Britain?

Using the first four waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991–4) and a variety of methods, we show that there is much mobility in household net income from one year to the next in Britain. However most income changes from one year to the next are not very large, and when incomes are longitudinally averaged so that transitory variations are smoothed out, substantial 'permanent' income differences are revealed. There is some evidence of greater mobility for those in the tails of the income distribution relative to the middle, and for elderly persons compared to non-elderly persons     

Intergenerational Mobility under Private vs. Public Education*

Intergenerational earnings mobility is analyzed in a model where human capital is produced using schooling and parental time. In steady states more mobile societies have less inequality, but in the short run higher mobility may result from an increase in inequality. Starting from the same inequality, mobility is higher under public than under private education. A rise in income shocks, for example due to increased returns to ability, or a switch from public to private schooling both increase inequality. However, increased shocks raise mobility in the short run and do not affect it in the long run, whereas an increased role for private schooling reduces mobility in both the short and long run. That these differences may help to identify the source of changes in inequality, and other real‐world implications, are illustrated in a brief discussion of time trends and cross‐country differences.     

影响农户购买小额医疗保险意愿的诸因素缕析

利用两县597户农户样本数据,采用Logistic模型分析影响农户购买小额医疗保险意愿的主要因素,结果表明,农户购买小额医保的意愿总体上非常强烈,家庭收入、健康状况、对保险公司的信任程度、文化程度以及子女数量是影响保险需求的主要因素,而年龄、性别、婚姻状况对小额医保需求则影响不大。由于小额医保与新农合在保障层次上重复设置,小额医保的市场空间狭小,在既定的制度背景下,若要推行小额医保,则必须在产品功能和保障水平上与传统的新农合区别开来。