In this paper I estimate age-saving profiles from micro data in six countries (Italy, Japan,
Taiwan, Thailand, the UK, and the US) to verify whether households are saving as postulated
by the life- cycle theory. The level of household savings depends on age, cohort
and year effects, and the perfect collinearity among these effects is broken by applying a
semiparametric regression model. In this model, the cohort effect is assumed to be an arbitrary
smooth function, and the model is estimated by the generalized additive model with
a penalized smoothing spline approach. Estimated saving-age profiles showed declining
savings in the old age for the majority of examined countries. An interesting feature for
Asian households was a double hump in savings, with a temporal dip for households in the
age bracket at around mid-40s.