IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v54y1994i04p735-767_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Savings of Ordinary Americans: The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Author

Listed:
  • Alter, George
  • Goldin, Claudia
  • Rotella, Elyce

Abstract

We explore the savings behavior of ordinary Americans through their accounts at the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, the oldest mutual savings bank in the United States. Our sample contains all 2,374 accounts opened in 1850. Savings accounts were generally brief affairs, but median balances mounted to about three-quarters of annual income in three years. Deposits and withdrawals were infrequent, but substantial. Only female servants, as a group, used their accounts for life-cycle savings, eventually amassing large nest eggs. Men often used them to hold funds before acquiring physical property. We estimate saving rates between 10 and 15 percent on active accounts.

Suggested Citation

  • Alter, George & Goldin, Claudia & Rotella, Elyce, 1994. "The Savings of Ordinary Americans: The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in the Mid-Nineteenth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(4), pages 735-767, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:54:y:1994:i:04:p:735-767_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700015473/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deaton, Angus, 1991. "Saving and Liquidity Constraints," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1221-1248, September.
    2. Claudia Goldin & Robert A. Margo, 1992. "Wages, Prices, and Labor Markets before the Civil War," NBER Chapters, in: Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel, pages 67-104, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Fishlow, Albert, 1961. "The Trustee Savings Banks, 1817–1861," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 26-40, March.
    4. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226301129 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eugene N. White & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2002. "Who panics during panics? Evidence from a nineteenth century savings bank," Working Papers 200212, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    2. Howard Bodenhorn, 2019. "Were Nineteenth‐Century Industrial Workers Permanent Income Savers?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(4), pages 1286-1310, April.
    3. Cormac Ó Gráda, 2001. "An institutional import : Irish savings banks c. 1820-1860," Working Papers 200117, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    4. Sok Chul Hong, 2010. "Marriage and Men's Wealth Accumulation in the United States, 1860-1870," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 26, pages 27-58.
    5. Timothy W. Guinnane, 2002. "Delegated Monitors, Large and Small: Germany's Banking System, 1800–1914," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 73-124, March.
    6. Cormac O Grada & Morgan Kelly, 2000. "Market Contagion: Evidence from the Panics of 1854 and 1857," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1110-1124, December.
    7. Lee, Chulhee, 1999. "Farm Value and Retirement of Farm Owners in Early-Twentieth-Century America," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 387-408, October.
    8. Guinnane, Timothy W., 2001. "Delegated Monitors, Large and Small: The Development of Germany's Banking System, 1800-1914," Center Discussion Papers 28447, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    9. Mersland, Roy, 2005. "Microcredit for self-employed disabled persons in developing countries," MPRA Paper 2068, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Cormac Ó Gráda, 2003. "Financial Panic, Famine and Contagion - Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s," Working Papers 200316, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    11. Di Matteo, Livio, 2013. "Women, wealth and economic change: An assessment of the impact of women's property law in Wentworth County, Ontario, 1872–1927," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 285-307.
    12. Simone A. Wegge & Tyler Anbinder & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2017. "Immigrants and savers: A rich new database on the Irish in 1850s New York," Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 144-155, July.
    13. Howard Bodenhorn, 2017. "Finance and Growth: Household Savings, Public Investment, and Public Health in Late Nineteenth-Century New Jersey," NBER Working Papers 23430, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Chulhee Lee, 2004. "Intra-household transfers and old-age security in America, 1890-1950," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 79-102.
    15. Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle H. & Neumayer, Andreas & Streb, Jochen, 2022. "Heterogeneous savers and their inflation expectation during German industrialization: Social class, wealth, and gender," Working Papers 33, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    16. Eugene N. White & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2003. "The panics of 1854 and 1857 : a view from the Emigration Industrial Savings Bank," Open Access publications 10197/438, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    17. Anbinder, Tyler & Connor, Dylan & O Grada, Cormac & Wegge, Simone, 2021. "The Problem of False Positives in Automated Census Linking: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century New York's Irish Immigrants," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 568, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    18. Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle & Neumayer, Andreas & Streb, Jochen, 2023. "Heterogeneous inflation and deflation experiences and savings decisions during German industrialization," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    19. Susan B. Carter & Richard Sutch, 1995. "Myth of the Industrial Scrap Heap: A Revisionist View of Turn-of-the- Century American Retirement," NBER Historical Working Papers 0073, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Michael G. Palumbo, 2000. "Estimating the Effects of Earnings Uncertainty on Families' Saving and Insurance Decisions," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(1), pages 64-86, July.
    21. Howard Bodenhorn, 2016. "Two Centuries of Finance and Growth in the United States, 1790-1980," Working Papers id:11352, eSocialSciences.
    22. Jaremski, Matthew & Plastaras, Brady, 2015. "An In-depth Analysis of New England Mutual Savings Banks, 1870-1914," Working Papers 2015-02, Department of Economics, Colgate University, revised 12 Feb 2015.

    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. Marcelo Bianconi, 2004. "Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Risk and the Behavior of Individual Preferences under Moral Hazard," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0410, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    2. Mahmud, Mahreen & Riley, Emma, 2021. "Household response to an extreme shock: Evidence on the immediate impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on economic outcomes and well-being in rural Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    3. Charles Grant & Christos Koulovatianos & Alexander Michaelides & Mario Padula, 2010. "Evidence on the Insurance Effect of Redistributive Taxation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 965-973, November.
    4. Christopher D. Carroll, 2000. "Requiem for the Representative Consumer? Aggregate Implications of Microeconomic Consumption Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 110-115, May.
    5. Patnaik, Unmesh & Narayanan, K, 2010. "Vulnerability and Coping to Disasters: A Study of Household Behaviour in Flood Prone Region of India," MPRA Paper 21992, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Oleksandr Shcherbakov, 2022. "Firm‐level investment under imperfect capital markets in Ukraine," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 227-255, February.
    7. Nathalie Girouard & Sveinbjörn Blöndal, 2001. "House Prices and Economic Activity," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 279, OECD Publishing.
    8. Geng, Xin & Janssens, Wendy & Kramer, Berber, 2018. "Liquid milk: Cash Constraints and Recurring Savings among Dairy Farmers in Kenya," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 273823, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    9. Flórez, Luz A., 2017. "Informal sector under saving: A positive analysis of labour market policies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 13-26.
    10. Dunn, Wendy E., 2003. "The effects of precautionary saving motives on (S,s) bands for home purchases," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 467-488, July.
    11. Tesfaye, Wondimagegn & Tirivayi, Nyasha, 2020. "Crop diversity, household welfare and consumption smoothing under risk: Evidence from rural Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    12. Mr. Christopher Carroll & Mr. Martin Sommer & Mr. Jiri Slacalek, 2012. "Dissecting Saving Dynamics: Measuring Wealth, Precautionary, and Credit Effects," IMF Working Papers 2012/219, International Monetary Fund.
    13. van den Berg, Marrit & Burger, Kees, 2008. "Household Consumption and Natural Disasters: The Case of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua," 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium 44380, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Mark Sommer & Kurt Kratena, 2016. "The Carbon Footprint of European Households and Income Distribution. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 113," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58787, February.
    15. Giordana, Gastón A. & Pi Alperin, María Noel, 2023. "Old age takes its toll: Long-run projections of health-related public expenditure in Luxembourg," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    16. Yannis M. Ioannides & Vassilis A. Hajivassiliou, 2007. "Unemployment and liquidity constraints," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 479-510.
    17. Marcet, Albert & Obiols-Homs, Francesc & Weil, Philippe, 2007. "Incomplete markets, labor supply and capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2621-2635, November.
    18. Janine Aron & John Muellbauer, 2006. "Housing Wealth, Credit Conditions and Consumption," CSAE Working Paper Series 2006-08, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    19. Alexander L. Brown & Zhikang Eric Chua & Colin F. Camerer, 2009. "Learning and Visceral Temptation in Dynamic Saving Experiments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 197-231.
    20. Laura Jeanet Martínez Rodríguez, 2017. "Impacto de la ola invernal sobre las dinámicas de uso del tiempo de hogares rurales," Documentos CEDE 15603, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

    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:cup:jechis:v:54:y:1994:i:04:p:735-767_01. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    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.