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There is probably no concept other than saving for which U.S. official agencies issue annual estimates that differ by more than a third, as they have done for net household saving, or for which reputable scholars claim that the correct measure is close to ten times the officially published one. Yet despite agreement among economists and policymakers on the importance of this measure, huge inconsistencies persist. Contributors to this volume investigate ways to improve aggregate and sectoral saving and investment estimates and analyze microdata from recent household wealth surveys. They provide analyses of National Income and Product Account (NIPA) and Flow-of-Funds measures and of saving and survey-based wealth estimates. Conceptual and methodological questions are discussed regarding long-term trends in the U.S. wealth inequality, age-wealth profiles, pensions and wealth distribution, and biases in inferences about life-cycle changes in saving and wealth. Some new assessments are offered for investment in human and nonhuman capital, the government contribution to national wealth, NIPA personal and corporate saving, and banking imputation.
The United States is in the midst of a major demographic shift. In the coming decades, people aged 65 and over will make up an increasingly large percentage of the population: The ratio of people aged 65+ to people aged 20-64 will rise by 80%. This shift is happening for two reasons: people are living longer, and many couples are choosing to have fewer children and to have those children somewhat later in life. The resulting demographic shift will present the nation with economic challenges, both to absorb the costs and to leverage the benefits of an aging population. Aging and the Macroeconomy: Long-Term Implications of an Older Population presents the fundamental factors driving the aging of the U.S. population, as well as its societal implications and likely long-term macroeconomic effects in a global context. The report finds that, while population aging does not pose an insurmountable challenge to the nation, it is imperative that sensible policies are implemented soon to allow companies and households to respond. It offers four practical approaches for preparing resources to support the future consumption of households and for adapting to the new economic landscape.
This paper analyzes several issues regarding the measurement of saving and concludes that the observed declines in national, private, and personal saving rates in the United States cannot be attributed to measurement problems. It then examines several factors that seem to have been behind the decline in U.S. personal saving. It suggests that structural changes in capital markets as well as improvements in wealth positions, in the living standards of the elderly, in social security pensions, and in private and public insurance mechanisms all contributed to the declining trend in personal saving. Empirical results suggest that demographic factors may also have played a major role.
We argue that the U.S. personal saving rate’s long stability (from the 1960s through the early 1980s), subsequent steady decline (1980s - 2007), and recent substantial increase (2008 - 2011) can all be interpreted using a parsimonious ‘buffer stock’ model of optimal consumption in the presence of labor income uncertainty and credit constraints. Saving in the model is affected by the gap between ‘target’ and actual wealth, with the target wealth determined by credit conditions and uncertainty. An estimated structural version of the model suggests that increased credit availability accounts for most of the saving rate’s long-term decline, while fluctuations in net wealth and uncertainty capture the bulk of the business-cycle variation.