John Karl Scholz
Professor of Economics
6434 Sewell Social Sciences
(608) 262-5380
jkscholz@facstaff.wisc.edu
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Curriculum Vitae
Research Interest Statement
Scholz’s recent work has focused on factors influencing retirement savings and wealth accumulation in the U.S. economy. With Brown and Seshadri, he uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the NLSY-97 to study family borrowing for education. They argue that educational investment is inefficient for intergenerationally constrained parent-child pairs. Scholz and Seshadri have also examined the substantial effect that children have on wealth accumulation. Their model incorporates endogeneous fertility choice into an augmented life-cycle consumption model. With Seshadri and Khitatrakun, Scholz studies whether Americans are saving optimally for retirement. Using a life-cycle model of household savings decisions, they find that 20 percent of Americans have less wealth than their optimal targets, and the wealth deficit of those who are undersaving is generally small.
| Fundamental Factors Affecting the Wealth and Retirement of Elderly Americans |
CDE Research Theme Working Groups
Demography of Inequality
Fertility/Families and Households