Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
49 Pages Posted: 28 Mar 2011 Last revised: 31 Oct 2013
There are 6 versions of this paper
Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
Wealth Shocks, Unemployment Shocks and Consumption in the Wake of the Great Recession
Date Written: October 30, 2013
Abstract
We use data from the 2009 Internet Survey of the Health and Retirement Study to examine the consumption impact of wealth shocks and unemployment during the Great Recession in the US. We find that many households experienced large capital losses in housing and in their financial portfolios, and that a non-trivial fraction of respondents have lost their job. As a consequence of these shocks, many households reduced substantially their expenditures. We estimate that the marginal propensities to consume with respect to housing and financial wealth are 1 and 3.3 percentage points, respectively. In addition, those who became unemployed reduced spending by 10 percent. We also distinguish the effect of perceived transitory and permanent wealth shocks, splitting the sample between households who think that the stock market is likely to recover in a year’s time, and those who don’t. In line with the predictions of standard models of intertemporal choice, we find that the latter group adjusted much more than the former its spending in response to financial wealth shocks.
Keywords: Wealth Shocks, Unemployment, Consumption, Great Recession
JEL Classification: E21, D91
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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