We show that financial knowledge is a key determinant of wealth inequality in a stochastic lifecycle model with endogenous financial knowledge accumulation, where financial knowledge enables individuals to better allocate lifetime resources in a world of uncertainty and imperfect insurance. Moreover, because of how the U.S. social insurance system works, better-educated individuals have most to...

The association between cultural orientation and material outcomes is fundamental to sociology research. This article contributes to the understanding of this relationship by exploring how religious affiliation affects wealth ownership for conservative Protestants (CPs). The results demonstrate that religion affects wealth indirectly through educational attainment, fertility, and female labor f...

Constrained Firms, Not Subsistence Activities: Evidence on Capital Returns and Accumulation in Peruvian Microenterprises We investigate the returns to capital and capital accumulation using panel data of Peruvian micro enterprises (MEs). Marginal returns to capital are found to be very high at low levels of capital, but rapidly decreasing at higher levels. The dynamic analyses of capital accumu...

We investigate the relationship between wealth, smoking, and individual propensities to plan. Planning propensity affects wealth but not smoking, suggesting that planning is not an allpurpose skill. Financial planning may draw on different abilities than those that facilitate smoking cessation. ∗ This research has been supported in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Subst...