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  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2017
  5. How Children with Mental Disabilities Affect Household Investment Decisions

How Children with Mental Disabilities Affect Household Investment Decisions

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Abstract

We analyze how children with mental disabilities influence parental portfolio allocation. We find that risky asset holding decreases among households with special needs children. However, conditional on participating in financial markets, households with special needs children invest a larger portion of their wealth in risky assets. As risky asset holding is a key component of wealth building, these findings have important implications for both policy and household wealth inequality.

Citation

Bogan, Vicki L., and Jose M. Fernandez. 2017. "How Children with Mental Disabilities Affect Household Investment Decisions." American Economic Review, 107 (5): 536-40. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20171145

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D13 Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
  • D14 Household Saving; Personal Finance
  • I12 Health Behavior
  • J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
  • J14 Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination