IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/y1998ijanp19-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Still charging: the growth of credit card debt between 1992 and 1995

Author

Abstract

Between 1991 and 1997, consumer revolving credit outstanding more than doubled - from $247 billion to $514 billion. This rapid rise of consumer debt, especially credit card debt, has generated much discussion about its cause, sustainability, and implications. Peter S. Yoo uses the recently released 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances to update a previous study that separated the growth of credit card debt into its two main components: increases in the number of households with credit cards and increases in average credit card balances. As before, the analysis separates the effects of lower- and upper-income households on the growth of credit card debt over the period studied. The author also compares the growth of credit card debt between 1992 and 1995 to its growth during the other intersurvey years to identify characteristics that may have affected recent growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter S. Yoo, 1998. "Still charging: the growth of credit card debt between 1992 and 1995," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 19-27.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:1998:i:jan:p:19-27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/98/01/9801py.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter S. Yoo, 1997. "Charging up a mountain of debt: accounting for the growth of credit card debt," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Mar, pages 3-13.
    2. Rochelle L. Antoniewicz, 1996. "A comparison of the household sector from the Flow of Funds Accounts and the Survey of Consumer Finances," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 96-26, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Robert B. Avery & Gregory E. Elliehausen, 1986. "Financial characteristics of high-income families," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), issue Mar, pages 163-177.
    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. Agarwal, Sumit & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Liu, Chunlin & Souleles, Nicholas S., 2005. "Do consumers choose the right credit contracts?," CFS Working Paper Series 2005/32, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    2. Irina A. Telyukova, 2013. "Household Need for Liquidity and the Credit Card Debt Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(3), pages 1148-1177.
    3. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "The reaction of consumer spending and debt to tax rebates: Evidence from consumer credit data," CFS Working Paper Series 2008/01, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    4. Edward Castronova & Paul Hagstrom, 2004. "The Demand for Credit Cards: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(2), pages 304-318, April.
    5. Sumit Agarwal & Souphala Chomsisengphet & Chunlin Liu & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2015. "Do Consumers Choose the Right Credit Contracts?," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(2), pages 239-257.
    6. Thomas Bishop & Cheolbeom Park, 2010. "Borrowing Constraints, the Marginal Propensity to Consume, and the Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy," Discussion Paper Series 1008, Institute of Economic Research, Korea University.

    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. Peter S. Yoo, 1996. "Charging up a mountain of debt: households and their credit cards," Working Papers 1996-015, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    2. Peter S. Yoo, 1997. "Charging up a mountain of debt: accounting for the growth of credit card debt," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Mar, pages 3-13.
    3. John C. Weicher, 1997. "Wealth and its distribution, 1983-1992: secular growth, cyclical stability," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 3-23.
    4. Moritz Kuhn & Moritz Schularick & Ulrike I. Steins, 2020. "Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949–2016," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3469-3519.
    5. James M. Poterba & Andrew A. Samwick, 1995. "Stock Ownership Patterns, Stock Market Fluctuations, and Consumption," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(2), pages 295-372.
    6. James M. Poterba, 1991. "Dividends, Capital Gains, and the Corporate Veil: Evidence from Britain, Canada, and the United States," NBER Chapters, in: National Saving and Economic Performance, pages 49-74, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Bernhardt, Dan & Douglas, Alan & Robertson, Fiona, 2005. "Testing dividend signaling models," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 77-98, January.
    8. Michael D. Hurd & B. Gabriela Mundaca, 1989. "The Importance of Gifts and Inheritances Among the Affluent," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 737-764, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Dean M. Maki & Michael G. Palumbo, 2001. "Disentangling the wealth effect: a cohort analysis of household saving in the 1990s," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-21, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Lucia Dunn & TaeHyung Kim, 1999. "Empirical Investigation of Credit Card Default," Working Papers 99-13, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.
    11. Alan J. Auerbach & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & David N. Weil, 1992. "The Increasing Annuitization of the Elderly- Estimates and Implications for Intergenerational Tranfers, Inequality, and National Saving," NBER Working Papers 4182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Daniel Feenberg & Lawrence H. Summers, 1990. "Who Benefits from Capital Gains Tax Reductions?," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy: Volume 4, pages 1-24, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Michael D. Hurd, 1989. "Issues and Results from Research on the Elderly I: Economic Status (Part I of III Parts)," NBER Working Papers 3018, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Sandra E. Black & Donald P. Morgan, 1999. "Meet the new borrowers," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 5(Feb).
    15. Edward Castronova & Paul Hagstrom, 2004. "The Demand for Credit Cards: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(2), pages 304-318, April.
    16. Donald L. Lerman, 1987. "Perspectives on Household Portfolios, 1977-83," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 399-410, Oct-Dec.
    17. Lucia Dunn & Tufan Ekici & Paul J. Lavrakas & Jeffery A. Stec, 2004. "An Index to Track Credit Card Debt and Predict Consumption," Working Papers 04-04, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.
    18. Daniel Radner, 1989. "The Wealth of the Aged and Nonaged, 1984," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 645-688, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Chih-Hsiung Chang, 2022. "Information Asymmetry and Card Debt Crisis in Taiwan," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 123-145.
    20. Eric M. Engen & William G. Gale & Cori E. Uccello, 2005. "Effects Of Stock Market Fluctuations On The Adequacy Of Retirement Wealth Accumulation," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 51(3), pages 397-418, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit cards;

    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:fip:fedlrv:y:1998:i:jan:p:19-27. 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: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    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.