Differential Mortality and Wealth Accumulation

In this paper, we examine the role played by differential mortality in estimates of life cycle wealth profiles. Our study makes three contributions. First, we show that the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) provides reliable data on mortality as compared to the US life table data. Second, we provide estimates of the relationship between mortality and wealth and show strong evidence of differential mortality. Lastly, and most importantly, we show that the differences in mortality by wealth are large enough to substantially affect the estimated wealth-age profiles.