The DOI matches its Crossref record; 29 of the 29 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance
Abstract
Micro data studies of household saving often find a significant group in the population with virtually no wealth, raising concerns about heterogeneity in motives for saving. In particular, this heterogeneity has been interpreted as evidence against the life cycle model of saving. This paper argues that a life cycle model can replicate observed patterns in household wealth accumulation after accounting explicitly for precautionary saving and asset-based, means-tested social insurance. We demonstrate theoretically that social insurance programs with means tests based on assets discourage saving by households with low expected lifetime income. In addition, we evaluate the model using a dynamic programming model with four state variables. Assuming common preference parameters across lifetime income groups, we are able to replicate the empirical pattern that low-income households are more likely than high-income households to hold virtually no wealth. Low wealth accumulation can be explained as a utility-maximizing response to asset-based, means-tested welfare programs.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Uncertain Lifetime, Life Insurance, and the Theory of the Consumer
Yaari, M. E. (1965) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.2307/2296058 · Cited by 3,198
Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large
Kimball, M. (1989) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w2848 · Cited by 1,498
Deaton, A. (1992) · doi:10.1093/0198288247.001.0001 · Cited by 1,427
Saving and Liquidity Constraints
Deaton, A. (1989) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w3196 · Cited by 1,341
The Buffer-Stock Theory of Saving: Some Macroeconomic Evidence
Carroll, C. D., Hall, R. E., & Zeldes, S. P. (1992) · Brookings Papers on Economic Activity · doi:10.2307/2534582 · Cited by 1,059
Self-citationPoverty and the Rate of Time Preference: Evidence from Panel Data
Lawrance, E. C. (1991) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261740 · Cited by 904
Optimal Consumption with Stochastic Income: Deviations from Certainty Equivalence
Zeldes, S. P. (1989) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.2307/2937848 · Cited by 902
Self-citationMaCurdy, T. E. (1982) · Journal of Econometrics · doi:10.1016/0304-4076(82)90096-3 · Cited by 827
Hurd, M. D. (1989) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1913772 · Cited by 676
On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes
Abowd, J. M., & Davidcard, B. A. (1989) · Cited by 600
Cited by
Dynan, K. E., Skinner, J., & Zeldes, S. P. (2004) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/381475 · Cited by 1,019
Self-citationThe Consumption Response to Income Changes
Jappelli, T., & Pistaferri, L. (2010) · Annual Review of Economics · doi:10.1146/annurev.economics.050708.142933 · Cited by 704
Optimal Financial Knowledge and Wealth Inequality
Lusardi, A., Michaud, P.-C., & Mitchell, O. S. (2017) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/690950 · Cited by 690
Entrepreneurship, Saving, and Social Mobility
Quadrini, V. (2000) · Review of Economic Dynamics · doi:10.1006/redy.1999.0077 · Cited by 678
Lusardi, A. (2008) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w13824 · Cited by 478
Metadata
- Authors
- Hubbard, R. G., Skinner, J., & Zeldes, S. P.
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1995-04
- Volume
- 103
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 360-399
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W1966879717
- Cited by
- 1,051
- References
- 29
- FWCI
- 110.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/261987
- The paper
- Hubbard, R. G., Skinner, J., & Zeldes, S. P. (1995). Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/261987
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
