Stock Market Ownership Transitions

A significant portion of U.S. households enters and exits investment accounts. Empirically, income and wealth changes are related to these transitions, with income changes not affecting the retired. A life cycle model with participation costs cannot match the observed ownership dynamics, but an extension with stock market crash better fits the average participation rate and ownership transitions of the middle-aged and retired. This extended model does not match the ownership dynamics of the young, which are better captured by a model with elevated income risk. Overall, these findings indicate that ownership transitions respond to wealth shocks across the life cycle, both in our model and the data.