TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fernandez-Villaverde, Jesus
AU  - Krueger, Dirk
TI  - Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9382
PY  - 2002
Y2  - December 2002
DO  - 10.3386/w9382
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9382
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9382.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
Department of Economics
University of Pennsylvania
The Ronald O. Perelman Center
 for Political Science and Economics
133 South 36th Street Suite 150
Philadelphia, PA 19104
E-Mail: jesusfv@econ.upenn.edu

Dirk Krueger
Economics Department
University of Pennsylvania
The Ronald O. Perelman Center
 for Political Science and Economics
133 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel: 215/898-6691
Fax: 215/573-2057
E-Mail: dkrueger@econ.upenn.edu
AB  - This paper uses a seminonparametric model and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to estimate life cycle profiles of consumption, controlling for demographics, cohort and time e.ects. In addition to documenting profiles for total and nondurable consumption, we devote special attention to the age expenditure pattern for consumer durables. We find hump-shaped paths over the life cycle for total, for nondurable and for durable expenditures. Changes in household size account for roughly half of these humps. The other half remains unaccounted for by the standard complete markets life cycle model. Our results imply that households do not smooth consumption over their lifetimes. This is especially true for services from consumer durables. Bootstrap simulations suggest that our empirical estimates are tight and sensitivity analysis indicates that the computed profiles are robust to a large number of different specifications.
ER  -