The Persistence of Income Shocks: Evidence from Rural Indonesia

This paper estimates the persistence of transient income shocks to farm households in rural Indonesia. Persistence is defined as the elasticity of a household's 1997 household per capita income with respect to its 1993 per capita income, controlling for time‐invariant characteristics of the household. Local rainfall levels are used as an exogenous source of transitory variation in 1993 income. Four main conclusions emerge. First, roughly 30% of household income shocks remain after four years. Second, the persistence of negative and positive shocks is approximately equal; if anything, positive shocks last longer. Third, neither positive nor negative income shocks disproportionately affect poor households. Finally, measurement error in income and unobserved household heterogeneity are important sources of bias. These findings cast doubt on common arguments advocating public intervention to stabilize or redistribute income, and suggest that anti‐poverty policy should address more permanent causes of household poverty.     

Optimal age‐dependent income taxation in a dynamic extensive model: The case for negative participation tax on young people

We consider optimal age‐dependent income taxation in a dynamic model where the labor‐leisure choice is the extensive margin, each household faces idiosyncratic shocks to labor productivity and a pecuniary cost to work, and there is no insurance market against the shocks. We show that the well‐known property of the optimal participation tax rate in the static model continues to hold in our dynamic economy, that is, the participation tax rates for some income groups with low consumption are likely negative. In dynamic models, the optimal participation tax rate depends on age and on labor income. Our numerical simulations suggest that a negative participation tax should be restricted to young households.     

Consumption smoothing in Russia

This paper uses panel data from rounds V–IX of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to examine the extent to which households are able to protect their consumption from fluctuations in their income. It is found that consumption is only partially protected from idiosyncratic shocks to income with food consumption being better protected than non‐food consumption expenditures. This suggests that adjustments in non‐food expenditures may be an important component of the risk management tools of Russian households. The analysis also provides evidence on the extent and nature of the coping strategies adopted by households. It is demonstrated that households complement their self‐insurance strategies, of borrowing, adjusting their labour supply, and selling assets, with informal risk sharing arrangements with households within their community. An examination of the role of sample selection confirmed that these findings are quite robust to this potential source of bias. Furthermore, accounting for the role of measurement and imputation errors in the measure of household income revealed that OLS estimates may yield a misleading picture about the extent to which urban and rural households are insured from idiosyncratic income shocks. JEL classification: D1, R2, P5.     

When is market incompleteness irrelevant for the price of aggregate risk (and when is it not)?

In a standard incomplete markets model with a continuum of households that have constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) preferences, the absence of insurance markets for idiosyncratic labor income risk has no effect on the premium for aggregate risk if the distribution of idiosyncratic risk is independent of aggregate shocks and aggregate consumption growth is independent over time. In equilibrium, households only use the stock market to smooth consumption; the bond market is inoperative. Furthermore, the cross-sectional distributions of wealth and consumption are not affected by aggregate shocks. These results hold regardless of the persistence of idiosyncratic shocks, even when households face tight solvency constraints. A weaker irrelevance result survives when we allow for predictability in aggregate consumption growth.     

Child labor and agricultural shocks

This paper examines the relationship between household income shocks and child labor. In particular, we investigate the extent to which transitory income shocks lead to increases in child labor and whether household asset holdings mitigate the effects of these shocks. Using data from a household panel survey in Tanzania, we find that both relationships are significant. We investigate mechanisms that could account for these results, including buffer stocks and borrowing.     

IDIOSYNCRATIC AND AGGREGATE RISKS,INEQUALITY AND GROWTH

The paper disaggregates productivity shocks at a firm level into idiosyncratic and aggregate risks, and studies their impacts on inequality, growth and welfare. It develops a growth model with human capital and incomplete insurance and credit markets that provides a closed‐form solution for income inequality dynamics. We find that uninsured idiosyncratic risks are the most important determinants of inequality, growth and welfare. They are the source of nondegenerate wealth distribution. A lower weight of these shocks leads to lower steady‐state inequality, higher growth and welfare. A redistribution of income that serves as social insurance against such risks increases welfare and decreases inequality. But, it also decreases growth by distorting individual consumption and saving decisions.     

A test of the household income process using consumption and wealth data

The evolution of household income can be explained almost equally well by rival models. However, rival models have very different implications for other household behaviours, such as consumption. I therefore test between two prominent models in the UK using panel data on consumption and wealth, as well as income, over 1991–2006. To operate the test, I show that long-lived income shocks transmit far less than one-for-one through to consumption, and particularly so for younger households. I then compare these estimates of transmission with estimates of households’ ability to smooth shocks, captured by the data on wealth. Conditional on the suitability of the consumption model, my estimates provide evidence against the restricted income process (RIP) and in favour of an alternative heterogeneous income process (HIP). This finding also explains why cross-sectional consumption inequality grew slowly over the period even though the variance of long-lived shocks was high. Finally, I conclude that it is important to consider mean reversion of shocks when constructing life-cycle consumption models.     

迁移类型、户籍身份与工资收入水平*

本文基于2013年中国居民收入调查数据（CHIP）,考察各类迁移对工资收入水平的影响。OLS及PSM估计结果均表明各类迁移有利于工资收入水平的提升;采用局部工具变量法进行稳健性检验,发现本文的研究结论依然成立。分迁移范围来看,市外迁移的平均收入增长效应大于市内迁移的平均收入增长效应;分户籍类型来看,农村户籍迁移的平均收入增长效应大于城市户籍的平均收入增长效应。综合比较各种迁移类型的收入增长效应,由强至弱可以将其排列为：永久移民市外迁移、农村户籍市外迁移、本地居民市外迁移、城市户籍市外迁移、农村户籍市内迁移、城市户籍市内迁移、本地居民市内迁移、永久移民市内迁移。城市化的核心在于满足居民的自由迁移意愿,从本文的研究结论来看,鼓励就近城市化而妨碍人口跨区域流动的城市化模式尚未得到收入增长激励的支撑。在推动户籍制度改革及公共服务均等化的同时,应注重建立全国统一的要素市场,进一步完善城市的空间结构体系。     

Poverty and Witch Killing

This study uses rainfall variation to estimate the impact of income shocks on murder in rural Tanzania. Extreme rainfall (drought or flood) leads to a large increase in the murder of „witches”—typically elderly women killed by relatives—but not other murders. The findings provide novel evidence on the role of income shocks in causing violent crime, and religious violence in particular.     

Intra- and international risk-sharing in the short run and the long run

We investigate empirically how industrialized countries and US states share consumption risk at horizons between 1 and 30 years. US federal states share about 50% of their permanent idiosyncratic risk through cross-state capital income flows. While insurance against transitory fluctuations in output is virtually complete, OECD countries do not share any of their permanent idiosyncratic risk. Our results suggest that purely transaction cost based theories cannot explain the home bias, since the potential welfare gains from insurance against permanent shocks would by far outweigh that of insuring against transitory variation. We conclude that permanent and transitory shocks constitute two qualitatively different kinds of risk and that various forms of endogenous market incompleteness may render permanent shocks a lot harder to insure, in particular at the international level.     

The role of education and household composition for transitory and permanent income inequality–evidence from PSID data

Transitory and permanent shocks to income have been shown to be important determinants of household consumption. This paper shows that there are significant differences in the trends of transitory and permanent income inequality between demographic groups since the 1980s. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, educational attainment and the composition of a household are found to play a key role. While permanent inequality increases steadily for educated households, it is flat over large parts of the sample period for the less educated households. Transitory inequality increases for all households headed by couples whereas it is constant for single households. Altogether, permanent shocks account for a larger part of the income variance of educated households whereas transitory shocks are relatively more important for the less educated. These results are able to shed light on the transmission of changes in income inequality to consumption inequality.     

健康风险冲击对农户收入的影响

本文基于中国8个省份、1354个农户、跨度15年的微观面板数据,测算了大病冲击对于农户长期收入的影响以及健康风险冲击持续的时间。我们发现:(1)大病冲击在随后的12年里对于农户人均纯收入都有显著的负面影响;(2)大病冲击对于农户的短期与中期影响使得患病户人均纯收入平均降低5%—6%;(3)健康风险冲击的长期影响可持续大约15年,并且冲击对于中低收入农户的影响更为严重。     

Inequality and volatility moderation in Russia: Evidence from micro-level panel data on consumption and income

We construct key household and individual economic variables using a panel micro data set from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for 1994–2005. We analyze cross-sectional income and consumption inequality trends and find that inequality decreased during the 2000–2005 economic recovery. The decrease appears to be driven by falling volatility of transitory income shocks. The response of consumption to permanent and transitory income shocks becomes weaker later in the sample, consistent with greater self-insurance against permanent shocks and greater smoothing of transitory shocks. Finally, expenditure and income inequality in Russia are not far apart.     

The response of household debt to income inequality shocks: a heterogeneous approach

This article explores the impact of changes in income inequality on household indebtedness using Pedroni's heterogeneous panel VAR. As a result, we find evidence in support of large cross-country heterogeneity in the responses of household leverage to income inequality shocks. We also find that such heterogeneity stems from differences in the strength of financial regulations and supervision.     

中国老年家庭的经济脆弱性与贫困

利用中国健康与营养调查(CHNS)2006和2009年的面板数据测度了老年家庭的经济脆弱性,检验各因素对经济脆弱性和贫困的相对影响力。老年家庭的经济脆弱性高于贫困;户主特征和家庭变量不同程度地影响到了经济脆弱性及贫困,代际间向上流动的私人转移支付对老年家庭的经济脆弱性和贫困没有作用;超过24%的非贫困家庭是经济脆弱性家庭;期望效用的脆弱性(VEU)方法表明,不平等虽然减少了脆弱性,但其影响经济脆弱性的力量最小,不可解释的风险是最重要的因素,异质性风险和协同性风险的力量居中。     

Constrained Inefficiency and Optimal Taxation with Uninsurable Risks

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so how? In a two‐period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare effects of these taxes into insurance and distribution effects. This allows us to determine how the sign of the optimal taxes on capital and labor depend on the nature of the shocks and the degree of heterogeneity among consumers' income, as well as on the way in which the tax revenue is used to provide lump‐sum transfers to consumers. When shocks affect primarily labor income and heterogeneity is small, the optimal tax on capital is positive. However, in other cases a negative tax on capital is welfare‐improving.     

The tradeoff between social insurance and aggregate fluctuations

Government programs that insure individuals against idiosyncratic risks, such as unemployment insurance, attempt to offset shocks that are obscured by behavioral variables. The resultant moral hazard reduces the efficiency of the insurance. When this feature is examined in a dynamic setting, the variance and duration of aggregate income fluctuations may be intensified by insurance.     

On the persistence of income shocks over the life cycle: Evidence,theory, and implications

How does the persistence of earnings change over the life cycle? Do workers at different ages face the same variance of idiosyncratic earnings shocks? This paper proposes a novel specification for residual earnings that allows for an age profile in the persistence and variance of labor income shocks. We show that the statistical model is identified, and we estimate it using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data. We find that shocks to earnings are only moderately persistent (around 0.75) for young workers. Persistence rises with age, up to unity, until midway through life. The variance of persistent shocks exhibits a U-shaped profile over the life cycle (with a minimum of 0.01 and a maximum of 0.05). These results suggest that the standard specification in the literature (with age-invariant persistence and variance) cannot capture the earnings dynamics of young workers. We also argue that a calibrated job turnover model can account for these nonflat profiles. The key idea is that workers sort into better jobs and settle down as they age; in turn, magnitudes of wage growth rates decline, thereby decreasing the variance of shocks. Furthermore, the decline in job mobility results in higher persistence. Finally, we investigate the implications of age profiles for consumption–savings behavior. The welfare cost of idiosyncratic risk implied by the age-dependent income process is up to 1.6 percent of lifetime consumption lower compared with its age-invariant counterpart. This difference is mostly due to a higher degree of consumption insurance for young workers, for whom persistence is moderate. These results suggest that age profiles of persistence and variances should be taken into account when calibrating life-cycle models.     

Is life more risky in the open? Household risk-coping and the opening of China's labor markets

This paper uses a unique panel of data from rural China to analyze the impact of expanding connections to off-farm labor markets on the income and consumption of farm households. With stronger village ties to both migrant and local off-farm labor markets, households in previously autarkic village communities experience reduced exposure to shocks affecting agricultural production. The analyses presented in this paper control for the persistent effect of past shocks influencing income and consumption, household attrition potentially correlated with shocks, and endogeneity of household demographic composition, land holdings and village network connections to migrant and local labor markets.     

Comparative effects of migrants’ remittances on composition of recipient household income in two small,island economies

We use unique household survey data from Fiji and Tonga to estimate and compare the combined impact of migration and remittances on the composition of household income. A two-step methodology is followed employing a migration prediction model followed by the estimation of a Three Stage Least Squares (3SLS) remittances and income equation system. We find that remittances contribute to growth in productive capital and entrepreneurial activity in the longer-established migrant economy, but have yet to impact on business activity in the more recently remittances-oriented economy, despite it having a more developed, market economy. In the latter case, remittances seem more linked to supporting consumption through supplementing low wage income. These findings suggest that the duration and intensity of remittance-driven migration, and the structure of economic activity within a community are important in understanding the influences of migration and remittances on household resource allocation and production decisions.