We address long-standing concerns in the literature on compensating wage differentials: the econometric properties of the estimated value of statistical life (VSL) and the wide range of such estimates. We confront prominent econometric issues using panel data, a more accurate fatality risk measure, and systematic application of panel data estimators. Controlling for measurement error, endogeneity, latent individual heterogeneity possibly correlated with regressors, state dependence, and sample composition yields VSL estimates of $4 million to $10 million. The comparatively narrow range clarifies the cost-effectiveness of regulatory decisions. Most important econometrically is controlling for latent heterogeneity; less important is how one does it.

Contrary to the predictions of the standard life-cycle model, many low-lifetime-income households accumulate little wealth relative to their incomes compared to households with high lifetime income. I use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and a correlated random-effects generalized-method-of-moments estimator to decompose the rich-poor gaps in wealth-to-permanent-income ratio into the portions attributable to differences in characteristics such as labor market earnings, income uncertainty, observed demographics, and the utilization of transfer programs which may have stringent income and liquid-asset tests, and those attributable to differences in the estimated coefficients on the respective characteristics. The results suggest that wealth-to-permanent-income ratios are increasing in permanent labor income and income uncertainty, but that transfer income, with or without asset tests, discourages liquid-asset accumulation. The decompositions indicate that most of the rich-poor wealth gap is attributable to differences in average characteristics and not coefficients. The leading factor driving the gap between the rich and poor in the ratio of liquid wealth to permanent income is asset-tested transfer income, whereas the leading factor driving the gap in the ratio of net worth to permanent income is labor-market earnings.

Neither the issue of how local and aggregate labor markets interact over time-nor the issue of how heterogeneity by education, race, and other factors interacts with these spatial dynamics-has previously been explored in the literature on the cyclicality of real wages. This study investigates how real wages respond to local and aggregate unemployment rates over time, and explores possible heterogeneities in the responses. Results, based upon data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, indicate that real wages move procyclically with both aggregate and local markets, but that the response to local changes occurs with a lag; that rates of return to education are procyclical overall for aggregate labor markets, but tend to be countercyclical for blacks; and that wages of union, manufacturing, blue-collar, and black workers tend to be less procyclical, even countercyclical for black college graduates. Overall, we find substantial spatial dynamics and heterogeneity in the cyclicality of real wages.