Models for household portfolios and life-cycle allocations in the presence of labour income and longevity risk

Campbell (2006) stressed the two main challenges of household finance: empirical analyses that highlight how households do invest (i.e. positive household finance) have important measurement problems, while suggestions about how investments should be made (i.e. normative household finance) encounter modelling problems. In this latter connection the final aim of this paper is to highlight the modelling requirements necessary to analyse the impact of household-specific risks on their portfolios, with special focus on the financial segment. To this end, after an overview of household portfolio theory, special emphasis is given to models incorporating two increasingly more important risks for the household: labour income and longevity risks. The paper concludes with some research directions.