Social Security and the Distribution of Wealth
- 1 December 1976
- journal article
- research article
- Published by JSTOR in Journal of the American Statistical Association
- Vol. 71 (356) , 800
- https://doi.org/10.2307/2286842
Abstract
Each household's “total wealth” is defined here as its “fungible wealth” (i.e., net worth) plus its “social security wealth” (i.e., the present actuarial value of its potential social security benefits). Analysis of fungible wealth and total wealth from a 1963 national household survey finds that (1) the distribution of total wealth is much less concentrated than the distribution of fungible wealth; (2) the concentration of total wealth has decreased sharply since 1920, and (3) the life cycle theory of wealth accumulation is more consistent with the age-income distribution of total wealth than with the distribution of fungible wealth.Keywords
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