Dynastic Precautionary Savings

This article documents that parents accumulate savings to insure their children against income risk. I refer to this behaviour as dynastic precautionary saving. Using a sample of matched parent-child pairs from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I test for dynastic precautionary savings by examining the response of parental consumption to the child's permanent income uncertainty. I exploit variation in permanent income risk across age and industry-occupation groups to confirm that, all else equal, higher uncertainty in the child's permanent income depresses parental consumption, indicating a precautionary saving motive across generations.