Date of Award

1-1-2011

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Economics

Content Description

1 online resource (x, 109 pages) : illustrations.

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

John Bailey Jones

Committee Members

Fang Yang, Baris Yoruk

Keywords

Households, Families, Cost and standard of living, Labor supply, Saving and investment

Subject Categories

Economics

Abstract

The aggregate savings rate in the U.S has fallen dramatically in the last few decades. One possible reason for this is the change in demographics. The fraction of unmarried people has increased as a result of rise in divorce rates and single parent households. In my dissertation, I explore the change in the household structure as the reason for the drop in aggregate savings rate. In order to understand the impact of demographics on savings rates, it is important to understand the wealth gaps across gender and marital status. This has led to the first chapter in my dissertation. In this chapter, I estimate how much of the wealth gap between single males and single females, and also between singles and couples is explained by income and demographics. I use the Oaxaca-Blinder regression decomposition to divide the wealth gap into a part that is explained by income and demographics and an other part that is unexplained.

Download

Included in

Economics Commons

Share

COinS