Risques financiers : juniors vs seniors

Abstract

Financial risks : juniors vs. seniors We consider the proportion of risky assets (stocks, bonds,...) among the household portfolios as a function of householder age, using two surveys conducted in 1995 on the holdings of financial assets. Unlike a common idea, older households hold more risky assets than their younger counterparts, both for homeowners and non homeowners and also among all wealth classes. We present the datasets used, the chosen classification of risky and riskless assets and we consider some explanations of the obtained results : learning effects, behaviour towards risk, background risk. We investigate the hypothesis that the volatility of young households earnings is high and thus that they minimize their risky financial investments.