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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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What does the distribution of wealth tell us about future retirement resources?
— a report of research carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions | | Author(s) | James Banks, Rowena Crawford, Gemma Tetlow |
| Corporate Author | Department for Work and Pensions - DWP; Institute for Fiscal Studies - IFS |
| Publisher | Department for Work and Pensions - DWP, London, 2010 |
| Pages | 90 pp (Department for Work and Pensions Research report 665) |
| Source | Paul Noakes, Commercial Support and Knowledge Management Team, 3rd Floor, Caxton House, Tothill Street, London SW1H 9HA. http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2009-201... |
| Annotation | The Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) 2006/08 provided the first detailed picture of wealth holdings in Great Britain among individuals of all ages and was, therefore, an important and long overdue addition to the statistical evidence base. The first descriptive report on WAS revealed stark differences in asset holdings, wealth levels and debts within the household population (Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2009)). However, from an economic perspective some of these differences are to be expected, and cross sectional differences in wealth, which reflects the 'stock' of all past saving, should not be analysed in the same way as cross sectional differences in 'flow' variables such as income. This paper therefore examines the cross-sectional distribution of household wealth holdings from the first wave of WAS from the perspective of a 'life cycle' model of saving behaviour. Rather than just document differences across the population in their raw form, the analysis is aimed at using evidence from both the initial WAS report and the WAS microdata itself to illustrate what the distribution of pension wealth and other forms of wealth can tell us about the level of, and uncertainty about, future retirement resources. With many of the households still years away from retirement and with only one cross-sectional observation of wealth holdings for each household, the researchers are cautious of inferring too much from just one wave of data. However, they have made some tentative observations about what the information of WAS 2006/08 can tell us about the prospect for future retirement resources. (KJ) |
| Accession Number | CPA-100819208 E |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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