Demographics and Monetary Policy Shocks

We show that consumption expenditures for older households are more responsive to monetary policy shocks than for young- or middle-aged households. A one-standard-deviation expansionary monetary policy shock induces a statistically significant and quantitatively large (1.7%) increase in aggregate consumption for old households over the ensuing 3 years. The responses for young- and middle-aged households are smaller and not statistically significant. We also present evidence, suggesting that life-cycle wealth effects play a role in driving the responses. We then build the wealth mechanism into a partial equilibrium life-cycle model, which can qualitatively match the empirical patterns.