Do the Russians Really Save That Much?—Alternate Estimates from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey

Paul R. Gregory; Manouchehr Mokhtari; Wolfram Schrettl

doi:10.1162/003465399558418

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Do the Russians Really Save That Much?—Alternate Estimates from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey

Paul R. Gregory¹; Manouchehr Mokhtari²; Wolfram Schrettl³

¹ University of Houston · ² Princeton University · ³ German Institute for Economic Research

The Review of Economics and Statistics 1999

We use a new independent survey of 4000 Russian households (the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey or RLMS) to study their saving behavior. The RLMS household saving rate (12%) is less than half the official figure (29%). Despite the massive changes of the transition, the Russian household saving rate of 1994 cannot be shown to be different from that of 1976. The patterns of Russian household saving differ from international experience: Its paradoxical U-shaped saving-age relationship may be explained by the dramatic deterioration of life expectancies of middle-aged Russians.

DOI: 10.1162/003465399558418
Volume: 81 (4)
Pages: 694-703
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
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