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Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde; Dirk Krueger1,2

1 National Bureau of Economic Research · 2 Stanford University

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2007 open access

This paper uses Consumer Expenditure Survey data and a seminonparametric statistical model to estimate life-cycle profiles of consumption, controlling for demographics, cohort, and time effects. We construct age profiles for total and nondurable consumption as well as expenditure patterns for consumer durables. Special emphasis is placed on the comparison of different approaches to control for changes in demographics over the life cycle. We find significant humps over the life cycle for total, nondurable, and durable expenditures. Changes in household

DOI
10.1162/rest.89.3.552
Volume
89 (3)
Pages
552-565
Language
en
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