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Do consumers rely more heavily on credit cards while unemployed?

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  • Allison Cole

Abstract

Leading up to the Great Recession, households increased their credit card debt by over 16 percent ($121 billion) during the five-year period from 2004 to 2009. The unemployment rate simultaneously began to rise in 2008, increasing from 5.0 percent in January 2008 to a high of 10.0 percent in October of 2009. During the recovery, from 2009 to 2014, credit card debt fell by more than 25 percent, as the unemployment rate returned to near prerecession levels. These coincident developments have led to speculation that consumers facing unemployment or job uncertainty may have increased their reliance on credit cards.

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  • Allison Cole, 2016. "Do consumers rely more heavily on credit cards while unemployed?," Research Data Report 16-6, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbdr:16-6
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Steven J. Davis & Felix Kubler & Paul Willen, 2006. "Borrowing Costs and the Demand for Equity over the Life Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(2), pages 348-362, May.
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    5. David B. Gross & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2002. "Do Liquidity Constraints and Interest Rates Matter for Consumer Behavior? Evidence from Credit Card Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 149-185.
    6. James X. Sullivan, 2008. "Borrowing During Unemployment: Unsecured Debt as a Safety Net," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(2), pages 383-412.
    7. Schuh, Scott & Stavins, Joanna, 2010. "Why are (some) consumers (finally) writing fewer checks? The role of payment characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1745-1758, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Claire Greene & Shaun O'Brien & Scott Schuh, 2017. "U. S. consumer cash use, 2012 and 2015: an introduction to the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice," Research Data Report 17-6, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer payment choice; credit cards; Survey of Consumer Payment Choice; unemployment; consumer preferences; consumer behavior;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis

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