Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/238088 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Working Papers No. 21-6
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Boston, MA
Abstract: 
Defined benefit (DB) pensions and Social Security are two important resources for financing retirement in the United States. However, these illiquid, non-market forms of wealth are typically excluded from measures of net worth. To the extent that these broadly held resources substitute for savings, measures of wealth inequality that do not account for DB pensions and Social Security may be overstated. This paper develops an alternative, expanded wealth concept, augmenting precise net worth data from the Survey of Consumer Finances with estimates of DB pension and expected Social Security wealth. We use this expanded wealth concept to explore the concentration of wealth among households aged 40 to 59 and find that (1) including DB pension and Social Security results in markedly lower measures of wealth concentration and that (2) trends toward higher wealth inequality over time, while moderated, are still present.
Subjects: 
wealth concentration
saving
Social Security
pensions
JEL: 
D14
D31
D63
G51
I31
J15
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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