IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/27617.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Initial Impacts of the Pandemic on Consumer Behavior: Evidence from Linked Income, Spending, and Savings Data

Author

Listed:
  • Natalie Bachas
  • Peter Ganong
  • Pascal J. Noel
  • Joseph S. Vavra
  • Arlene Wong
  • Diana Farrell
  • Fiona E. Greig

Abstract

We use U.S. household-level bank account data to investigate the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on spending and savings. Households across the income distribution all cut spending from March to early April. Since mid April, spending has rebounded most rapidly for low-income households. We find large increases in liquid asset balances for households throughout the income distribution. However, lower-income households contribute disproportionately to the aggregate increase in balances, relative to their pre-pandemic shares. Taken together, our results suggest that spending declines in the initial months of the recession were primarily caused by direct effects of the pandemic, rather than resulting from labor market disruptions. The sizable growth in liquid assets we observe for low-income households suggests that stimulus and insurance programs during this period likely played an important role in limiting the effects of labor market disruptions on spending.

Suggested Citation

  • Natalie Bachas & Peter Ganong & Pascal J. Noel & Joseph S. Vavra & Arlene Wong & Diana Farrell & Fiona E. Greig, 2020. "Initial Impacts of the Pandemic on Consumer Behavior: Evidence from Linked Income, Spending, and Savings Data," NBER Working Papers 27617, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27617
    Note: EFG ME PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w27617.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Bitler & Hilary W. Hoynes & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2020. "The Social Safety Net in the Wake of COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 27796, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Peter Ganong & Pascal Noel, 2019. "Consumer Spending during Unemployment: Positive and Normative Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(7), pages 2383-2424, July.
    3. Ezra Karger & Aastha Rajan, 2020. "Heterogeneity in the Marginal Propensity to Consume: Evidence from Covid-19 Stimulus Payments," Working Paper Series WP-2020-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 21 Feb 2021.
    4. Diane Alexander & Ezra Karger, 2020. "Do Stay-at-Home Orders Cause People to Stay at Home? Effects of Stay-at-Home Orders on Consumer Behavior," Working Paper Series WP-2020-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 19 Aug 2021.
    5. Ganong, Peter & Noel, Pascal & Vavra, Joseph, 2020. "US unemployment insurance replacement rates during the pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    6. Asger Lau Andersen & Emil Toft Hansen & Niels Johannesen & Adam Sheridan, 2020. "Pandemic, Shutdown and Consumer Spending: Lessons from Scandinavian Policy Responses to COVID-19," Papers 2005.04630, arXiv.org.
    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. Natalie Cox & Peter Ganong & Pascal Noel & Joseph Vavra & Arlene Wong, 2020. "Initial impacts of the pandemic on consumer behavior: Evidence from linked income, spending, and savings data," Working Papers 2020-39, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    2. Akos Horvath & Benjamin S. Kay & Carlo Wix, 2021. "The COVID-19 Shock and Consumer Credit: Evidence from Credit Card Data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-008, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2021. "A Social Insurance Perspective on Pandemic Fiscal Policy: Implications for Unemployment Insurance and Hazard Pay," NBER Working Papers 29419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Nathaniel Hendren & Michael Stepner & The Opportunity Insights Team, 2020. "The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data," NBER Working Papers 27431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Di Fang & Michael R. Thomsen & Rodolfo M. Nayga & Wei Yang, 2022. "Food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from a survey of low-income Americans," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 14(1), pages 165-183, February.
    6. Tsutomu Watanabe & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2021. "Japan’s voluntary lockdown: further evidence based on age-specific mobile location data," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 72(3), pages 333-370, July.
    7. Larrimore, Jeff & Mortenson, Jacob & Splinter, David, 2022. "Earnings shocks and stabilization during COVID-19," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    8. Elisa Guglielminetti & Concetta Rondinelli, 2021. "Consumption and saving patterns in Italy during Covid-19," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 620, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    9. Divakaruni, Anantha & Zimmerman, Peter, 2021. "Uncovering Retail Trading in Bitcoin: The Impact of COVID-19 Stimulus Checks," SocArXiv khw8a, Center for Open Science.
    10. Ezra Karger & Aastha Rajan, 2020. "Heterogeneity in the Marginal Propensity to Consume: Evidence from Covid-19 Stimulus Payments," Working Paper Series WP-2020-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 21 Feb 2021.
    11. Guido Matias Cortes & Eliza C. Forsythe, 2020. "Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the CARES Act on Earnings and Inequality," Upjohn Working Papers 20-332, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    12. Carvalho, V & Garcia, Juan R. & Hansen, S. & Ortiz, A. & Rodrigo, T. & More, J. V. R., 2020. "Tracking the COVID-19 Crisis with High-Resolution Transaction Data," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2030, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Rees-Jones, Alex & D’Attoma, John & Piolatto, Amedeo & Salvadori, Luca, 2022. "Experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and support for safety-net expansion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1090-1104.
    15. Daniel Aaronson & Scott A. Brave & Michael Fogarty & Ezra Karger & Spencer D. Krane, 2021. "Tracking U.S. Consumers in Real Time with a New Weekly Index of Retail Trade," Working Paper Series WP-2021-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 18 Jun 2021.
    16. Hackethal, Andreas & Weber, Annika, 2020. "Fiscal policies and household consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review of early evidence," SAFE White Paper Series 76, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    17. Hanghun Jo & Eunha Shin & Heungsoon Kim, 2020. "Changes in Consumer Behaviour in the Post-COVID-19 Era in Seoul, South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-16, December.
    18. Andersen, Asger Lau & Hansen, Emil Toft & Johannesen, Niels & Sheridan, Adam, 2020. "Consumer Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Bank Account Transaction Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 14809, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Tsutomu Watanabe & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2021. "Japan’s Voluntary Lockdown: Further Evidence Based on Age-Specific Mobile Location Data," CARF F-Series CARF-F-508, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    20. Robert Hartwig & Greg Niehaus & Joseph Qiu, 2020. "Insurance for economic losses caused by pandemics," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 45(2), pages 134-170, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:nbr:nberwo:27617. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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: (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.