IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v27y1995i4p37-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Did Household Saving Really Decline in the Reagan Years?

Author

Listed:
  • Fred Block

    (Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis)

Abstract

This paper challenges the conventional belief that household saving in the U.S. declined during the Reagan Years. The paper proposes a definition of the household financial surplus that is available for use by corporations and the public sector. It shows how existing measures of household saving diverge from this definition, and it proposes alternative estimates of the trend of this household financial surplus in the 1980s. These alternative estimates show no downward trend, and in most years, the available supply of funds has exceeded business and government demands.

Suggested Citation

  • Fred Block, 1995. "Did Household Saving Really Decline in the Reagan Years?," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 27(4), pages 37-55, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:27:y:1995:i:4:p:37-55
    DOI: 10.1177/048661349502700402
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/048661349502700402
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/048661349502700402?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence Summers & Chris Carroll, 1987. "Why Is U.S. National Saving So Low?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 18(2), pages 607-642.
    2. Fred Block, 1990. "Bad Data Drive Out Good: The Decline of Personal Savings Reexamined," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 3-19, September.
    3. David F. Bradford, 1990. "What is National Saving?: Alternative Measures in Historical and International Context," NBER Working Papers 3341, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Robert Pollin, 1993. "Budget Deficits and the US Economy: Considerations in a Heilbronerian Mode," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Ron Blackwell & Jaspal Chatha & Edward J. Nell (ed.), Economics as Worldly Philosophy, chapter 5, pages 107-144, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Margaret H. Pickering, 1991. "A review of corporate restructuring activity, 1980-90," Staff Studies 161, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. John McNeil & Enrique Lamas, 1989. "Year-Apart Estimates of Household Net Worth from the Survey of Income and Program Participation," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 431-472, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Thomas Holloway, 1989. "Present NIPA Saving Measures: Their Characteristics and Limitations," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 21-100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. June Axinn & Mark J. Stern, 1990. "Social Security Policy Reconsidered," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(4), pages 22-27, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A Lusardi & J Skinner & S Venti, 2001. "Saving puzzles and saving policies in the United States," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 95-115, Spring.
    2. Kaiji Chen & Ayse Imrohoroglu & Selahattin Imrohoroglu, 2006. "Secular Trends in U.S Saving and Consumption," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 494, Society for Computational Economics.
    3. Roy H. Webb, 1993. "Personal saving behavior and real economic activity," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 68-94.
    4. William G. Gale & John Sabelhaus, 1999. "Perspectives on the Household Saving Rate," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 30(1), pages 181-224.
    5. C. Lee, 1998. "Life Cycle Savings in the United States, 1900-1990," CPE working papers 0014, University of Chicago - Centre for Population Economics.
    6. Meissner, Thomas & Rostam-Afschar, Davud, 2017. "Learning Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 273-288.
    7. Stefan Homburg, 2014. "Overaccumulation, Public Debt and the Importance of Land," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 15(4), pages 411-435, November.
    8. David Meerschwam, 1991. "The Japanese Financial System and the Cost of Capital," NBER Chapters, in: Trade with Japan: Has the Door Opened Wider?, pages 191-224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Muñoz, Sònia, 2004. "Real effects of regional house prices: dynamic panel estimation with heterogeneity," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24704, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Choi, Horag & Mark, Nelson C. & Sul, Donggyu, 2008. "Endogenous discounting, the world saving glut and the U.S. current account," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 30-53, May.
    11. Chen, Kaiji & Imrohoroglu, Ayse & Imrohoroglu, Selahattin, 2009. "A quantitative assessment of the decline in the U.S. current account," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1135-1147, November.
    12. Beverly, Sondra G. & Sherraden, Michael, 1999. "Institutional determinants of saving: implications for low-income households and public policy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 457-473.
    13. Michael Reiter, 1999. "Asset prices and the measurement of wealth and saving," Economics Working Papers 396, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    14. Roger E.A. Farmer & Pawel Zabczyk, 2019. "Monetary and Fiscal Policy When People Have Finite Lives," NBER Working Papers 25445, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Leah M. Cook & Alicia H. Munnell, 1991. "Explaining the postwar pattern of personal saving," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 17-28.
    16. Bradford, D.F., 1989. "Market Value Us. Financial Accounting Measures Of National Saving," Papers 34, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Discussion Paper.
    17. Michael J. Boskin, 1991. "Issues in the Measurement and Interpretation of Saving and Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: Fifty Years of Economic Measurement: The Jubilee of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, pages 159-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Daniel Feenberg & Jonathan Skinner, 1989. "Sources of IRA Saving," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 3, pages 25-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & John Sabelhaus, 1996. "Understanding the Postwar Decline in U.S. Saving: A Cohort Analysis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 27(1), pages 315-407.
    20. Jonathan A. Parker, 2000. "Spendthrift in America? On Two Decades of Decline in the US Saving Rate," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1999, Volume 14, pages 317-387, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:27:y:1995:i:4:p:37-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.