IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/postke/v48y2025i2p149-171.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Household financial fragility in Brazil (2005–2023): a minskyan analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Norberto Montani Martins
  • Paula Sarno
  • Carmem Feijó

Abstract

The increase in household indebtedness has been a striking feature of the Brazilian economy since the 2000s. This paper aims to analyze the evolution of Brazilian households’ indebtedness and financial fragility from 2005 to 2023. The hypothesis is that this period of ‘Great Indebtedness’ is related to an increase in Brazilian households’ financial fragility. We develop a theoretical framework based on Minskyan insights on the management of cash flows and balance sheets. From an empirical analysis of descriptive statistics, we argued that periods of increase in indebtedness are not necessarily contemporary to periods of increasing financial fragility: for instance, the COVID-19 crisis prompted a significant increase in indebtedness, but other policies such as unconditional cash transfers were able to provide the necessary cash-flows for Brazilian households managing their ‘survival constraints’ in a more flexible way. Despite this, we highlight the indebtedness and financial fragility of households is a major feature of Brazil’s current economic and social degradation.

Suggested Citation

  • Norberto Montani Martins & Paula Sarno & Carmem Feijó, 2025. "Household financial fragility in Brazil (2005–2023): a minskyan analysis," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 149-171, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:postke:v:48:y:2025:i:2:p:149-171
    DOI: 10.1080/01603477.2024.2378744
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01603477.2024.2378744
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01603477.2024.2378744?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:mes:postke:v:48:y:2025:i:2:p:149-171. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MPKE20 .

    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.