IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v222y2023ics0165176522004268.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Holiday gift giving in retreat

Author

Listed:
  • Waldfogel, Joel

Abstract

Using US cross-section data, holiday gift giving is a normal good whose income elasticity of demand is about 0.5. As income rose 1914–2000, aggregate holiday gift expenditure grew as well. Since 2000, however, holiday giving has fallen in real terms as income has continued to rise. While gift giving remains normal in household cross sections, it behaves like an inferior good in the post-2000 national time series.

Suggested Citation

  • Waldfogel, Joel, 2023. "Holiday gift giving in retreat," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:222:y:2023:i:c:s0165176522004268
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110952
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176522004268
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110952?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Getzen, Thomas E., 2000. "Health care is an individual necessity and a national luxury: applying multilevel decision models to the analysis of health care expenditures," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 259-270, March.
    2. Basker, Emek, 2005. "'Twas four weeks before Christmas: Retail sales and the length of the Christmas shopping season," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 317-322, December.
    3. Shoichi Ito & E. Wesley F. Peterson & Warren R. Grant, 1989. "Rice in Asia: Is It Becoming an Inferior Good?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 71(1), pages 32-42.
    4. Emek Basker, 2011. "Does Wal‐Mart Sell Inferior Goods?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(4), pages 973-981, October.
    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. Stefan Schiman-Vukan, 2013. "Langfristige Perspektiven der öffentlichen Finanzen in Österreich. Projektionen des Staatshaushalts bis 2050," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 46670.
    2. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225, March.
    3. Laura Birg & Anna Goeddeke, 2016. "Christmas Economics—A Sleigh Ride," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(4), pages 1980-1984, October.
    4. Tamara Fioroni, 2010. "Optimal savings and health spending over the life cycle," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 11(4), pages 355-365, August.
    5. Fu, Hwai-Hui & Tsai, Hsien-Tang & Lin, Ching-Wei & Wei, Duan, 2004. "Application of a single sampling plan for auditing medical-claim payments made by Taiwan National Health Insurance," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 185-195, November.
    6. Frank Denton & Dean Mountain, 2014. "The implications of mean scaling for the calculation of aggregate consumer elasticities," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(3), pages 297-314, September.
    7. Sunde, Uwe & Cervellati, Matteo, 2007. "Human Capital, Mortality and Fertility: A Unified Theory of the Economic and Demographic Transition," CEPR Discussion Papers 6384, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Stefan Schiman-Vukan, 2022. "Langfristige Perspektiven der öffentlichen Finanzen in Österreich," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 70395, August.
    9. Stefan Felder, 2006. "Lebenserwartung, medizinischer Fortschritt und Gesundheitsausgaben: Theorie und Empirie," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(s1), pages 49-73, May.
    10. Rinaldo Brau & Gianluca Fiorentini & Matteo Lippi Bruni & Anna Maria Pinna, 2004. "La disponibilità a pagare per la copertura del rischio di non autosufficienza: analisi econometrica e valutazioni di "policy"," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 357-388.
    11. Esra N. Kilci, 2021. "A study on financial sustainability of healthcare indicators for Turkey under the health transformation program," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1287-1307, July.
    12. Cinzia Di Novi & Anna Marenzi & Dino Rizzi, 2018. "Do healthcare tax credits help poor-health individuals on low incomes?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(2), pages 293-307, March.
    13. Yen-ju Lin & Chun-chih Chen, 2012. "Eating Behavior and the Utilization of Outpatient Services - The Case of Taiwan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 2181-2197.
    14. Hyejin Lee & Dong-Yop Oh & Ming Meng, 2019. "Stationarity and cointegration of health care expenditure and GDP: evidence from tests with smooth structural shifts," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 631-652, August.
    15. Eugene Kouassi & Gnoudentiho G Silue & Oluyele Akinkugbe & Jean Marcelin B Brou, 2017. "Health expenditures and Income with Nonstationary Panel Data: Evidence from ECOWAS Member Countries," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(3), pages 2198-2218.
    16. Fabio Pammolli & Nicola Carmine Salerno, 2006. "Spesa sanitaria, demografia, governance istituzionale - Tra trend storici e proiezioni a lungo termine," Working Papers CERM 02-2006, Competitività, Regole, Mercati (CERM).
    17. Duncan, Ronald C., 2004. "Achieving food security in China: Implications of WTO accession," 2004 Conference (48th), February 11-13, 2004, Melbourne, Australia 58402, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    18. Jay Dev Dubey, 2021. "Measuring Income Elasticity of Healthcare-Seeking Behavior in India: A Conditional Quantile Regression Approach," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 19(4), pages 767-793, December.
    19. Shubhangi Agrawal & Sambit Bhattacharyya & Chirantan Chatterjee & Somdeep Chatterjee, 2024. "Income shock and Women’s Health Spending:Evidence from India," Working Paper Series 1324, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    20. Michael Kremer, Christopher M. Snyder & Christopher M. Snyder, 2013. "When Is Prevention More Profitable than Cure? The Impact of Time-Varying Consumer Heterogeneity - Working Paper 334," Working Papers 334, Center for Global Development.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Holiday gift giving; Inferior goods;

    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:eee:ecolet:v:222:y:2023:i:c:s0165176522004268. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.