Consumer Debt and the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality in the US (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Economic Issues, 2009
Our previous research argued that interest payments on consumer debt should be subtracted from household income to measure poverty. We estimated 4 million additional poor Americans in 2007, calling them "debt poor." This paper finds that the debt poor are somewhat like the poor (they are unlikely to own a home or have private health insurance), somewhat like middle-class households (race), and in-between in other ways (education levels). Debt poor households were likely middle class once, having access to considerable consumer credit; but following a loss of income, their large debt burden put their living standard below their poverty threshold.
Poverty Levels and Debt Indicators Among Low-Income Households Before and After the Great Recession
Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 2017
This study analyzed the debt profile of low-income households before and after the Great Recession using the 2007, 2010, and 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). We used Heckman selection models to investigate three debt characteristics: (a) the amount of debt, (b) debt-to-income ratio, and (c) debt delinquency. Before and after the Great Recession, results from the selection stage showed the probability of holding debt for households increased as their income level increased (moving into less severe poverty categories); results from the outcome stage indicated households in the most severe poverty category (below 100% of poverty threshold) were less likely to meet debt-to-income ratio guidelines. Following the Great Recession, these lowest income households were more likely to have higher debt and debt delinquency problems.
Exploring the link between household debt and income inequality: an asymmetric approach
We investigate the relationship between household debt and income inequality in the US, allowing for asymmetry, using data over the period 1913-2008. We find evidence of an asymmetric cointegration between household debt and inequality for different regimes. Our results indicate household debt only responds to positive changes in income inequality, while there is no evidence of falling inequality significantly affecting household debt. The presence of this asymmetry provides further empirical insights into the emerging literature on household debt and inequality.
International journal of social sciences, 2021
This paper studies socioeconomic dynamics of deposit-taking institutions and their ability to affect inequality through the access and depth of the financial channels using a unique data set of aggregated statewide socioeconomic indicators and banking data obtained from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Panel data econometric application to the data combined with a unique interpretation of the Gini and the median income indicators facilitates our understanding of inequality within the income distribution resulting from changes in loan through the ARDL technique. The major recommendation from this investigation is that financial activity is fundamental to the understanding of inequality dynamics.
Can Income Inequality Affects Household Debt?
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
The present study aims to evaluate the influence of income inequality on household debt by applying the dynamic GMM estimator to a database covering advanced and emerging countries over the period 1994 to 2019. The result shows that income inequality promotes the growth of household debt. Furthermore, higher house prices and financial development increase the household debt. Meanwhile, the economic growth, interest rate and unemployment have negative and significant effect on household debt. The finding of the study suggests the involved authorities formulate suitable policies and initiatives in order to monitor the increase in household debt. Indirectly, this measure can be useful to consider as an early warning signal for crises.
Household debt: The missing link between inequality and secular stagnation
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019
How do inequality and growth evolve in the long run and why? We address this question by analyzing the interplay between household debt, growth and inequality within a monetary, stock-flow consistent framework. We first consider a Goodwin-Keen model where household consumption, rather than investment by firms, is the key behavioural driver for the dynamics of the economy. Whenever consumption exceeds current income, households can borrow from the banking sector. The resulting three dimensional dynamical system for wage share, employment rate, and household debt exhibits the characteristic asymptotic equilibria of the original Keen model, namely the analogue of Solow's balanced-growth path, where all state variables converge to an interior point, in addition to deflationary equilibria with explosive debt and collapsing employment. We then extend this setup by separating the household sector into workers and investors, obtaining a four-dimensional system with analogous types of asymptotic behaviour. Our main result is that long-run increasing inequality between these two classes of households occurs if and only if the system approaches one of the equilibria with unbounded debt ratios. More specifically, we find that one essential channel of increased inequality is the wealth transfer from workers to investors due to interest paid on debt from the former to the latter. Finally, when properly rewritten, the celebrated inequality r > g turns out to be a necessary condition for the asymptotic stability of long-run debt-deflation. Our findings shed new light on the relationships between fairness and efficiency, and have implications for public economic policy.
Unsustainable Household Debt: Problems of Measurement
Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung
Summary: In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, a significant research effort has been made to better understand the links between household debt levels, financial stability risks, and the ongoing implications of the ‘debt overhang’ for economic growth. However, accurately measuring the household debt burden remains problematic. Aggregate measures of household indebtedness (e. g. household liabilities relative to income) fail to fully capture the debt servicing burdens of households, particularly in periods when real incomes are declining (as has been the case in the UK in recent years). They also provide no insight into the distribution of debt burdens, which may be important for both future financial stability and economic growth. We attempt to address this problem by combining a new analysis of aggregate data with insights gleaned from household debt surveys. We first construct a new measure of debt interest payments as a percentage of the overall household surplus from the ...
International Conference on Eurasian Economies 2021, 2021
In the neoliberal era, financialization of the economies is associated both with large-scale speculative movements in the financial sector and over-indebtedness. The fact that there were significant increases in household indebtedness in the United States before the 2008/09 global financial crisis made the growing indebtedness an outstanding issue that should be examined in terms of its supply and demand-side causes and its distributive consequences. Increasing inequality in income distribution has been an important consideration associated with the increase in household indebtedness. In a sense, the borrowing opportunities enable working households to maintain their consumption and living standards in the short term despite the stagnation in wages and thus increasing inequality, but it does not prevent them from undergoing an unsustainable debt burden. This debt burden creates a feedback effect by deepening the existing inequality. The purpose of this study is to reveal the macro a...
Consumer Debt is 130% of Income: Avoiding Budget Constraint Orthodoxy
Consumer theory still maximizes utility subject to a budget constraint, when in fact 2008 data show that consumer debt is 130% of disposable income. Granger-causality tests confirm Consumption precedence over income. We discuss several features of newer US data, such as the ability to start /stop part-time /full time work /school, allowing families a greater control on the timing and level of income. Hence, our Wiener-Hopf-Whittle model uses ‘target-seeking’ optimization, while our two-equation system makes both consumption and income endogenous, similar to quantities and prices in a demand system. The new model provides estimates of shadow prices of income level and adjustment costs, and is shown to help resolve five old ‘puzzles’ from the consumer theory literature.
Rising household debt: Its causes and macroeconomic implications--a long-period analysis
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2008
The article analyses the rise in household indebtedness from the point of view of its causes and long-run macroeconomic implications. The analysis is focussed on the US case. Differently from life-cycle interpretations of the phenomenon, and from interpretations in terms of erratic deviations of current income flows from their longrun trend, the rising household debt is viewed as the outcome of persistent changes in income distribution and growing income inequalities. Through household debt, low wages appear to have been brought to coexist with relatively high levels of aggregate demand, thus providing the solution to the contradiction between the necessity of high and rising consumption levels, for the growth of the system's actual output, and a framework of antagonistic conditions of distribution which keeps within limits the real income of the vast majority of society. The question of the longrun sustainability of this substitution of loans for wages is finally discussed.