Journal Article
At the Richmond Fed: Wiser Policy for Seniors
Mullin, John (2023-01)
The American population is aging rapidly. The share of people who are 65 or older grew from 12 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2020. It's forecast to grow to 22 percent by 2040, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.In view of this trend, economists are attempting to improve their understanding of the economic decisions facing older people — decisions that are likely to become increasingly important for the U.S. economy as the population distribution skews older.
Econ Focus , Issue 1Q , Pages 23

Working Paper
The Age-Time-Cohort Problem and the Identification of Structural Parameters in Life-Cycle Models
Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam (2017-10-19)
A standard approach to estimating structural parameters in life-cycle models imposes sufficient assumptions on the data to identify the ?age profile" of outcomes, then chooses model parameters so that the model's age profile matches this empirical age profile. I show that this approach is both incorrect and unnecessary: incorrect, because it generally produces inconsistent estimators of the structural parameters, and unnecessary, because consistent estimators can be obtained under weaker assumptions. I derive an estimation method that avoids the problems of the standard approach. I ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2017-18