ABSTRACT
Most of the decline in the U.S. saving rate during the 1980s was due to extraordinary peacetime federal deficits and an unusually low personal saving rate. As a result, proposals to increase saving have focused either on reducing the federal budget deficit or on increasing personal saving. Corporate saving, which has historically accounted for nearly 40 percent of national saving, has received limited attention in recent policy discussions. This is especially surprising because the political difficulty of deficit reduction and the controversial efficacy of personal saving plans have limited the consensus for either of these approaches to increasing national saving.
