IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v6y2001i3p1-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding Consumption: What Interviews with Retired Households Can Reveal about Budgetary Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Edmund Chattoe
  • Nigel Gilbert

Abstract

This paper uses interview data from retired households to inform a discussion about economic models of consumption. It is divided into two parts. In the first part, the economic models are described. The paper then discusses several different types of reasons for finding them unhelpful in explaining consumption. The second part of the paper considers the role of ‘middle range’ theories in developing plausible models of household behaviour. Phenomena which the interviews suggest are important in explaining consumption, such as time allocation, the labour supply decision, the ubiquitous durability of goods and the structure of the household, are not typically supported by middle range theory in current models. Without the constraints of such theory, it is very hard to distinguish models providing genuine explanation from those that merely fit the data. The latter part of the paper also discusses aspects of a new middle range theory of consumption suggested by the interviews.

Suggested Citation

  • Edmund Chattoe & Nigel Gilbert, 2001. "Understanding Consumption: What Interviews with Retired Households Can Reveal about Budgetary Decisions," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 6(3), pages 1-12, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:6:y:2001:i:3:p:1-12
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.627
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.627
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5153/sro.627?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deaton,Angus & Muellbauer,John, 1980. "Economics and Consumer Behavior," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521296762, September.
    2. Christopher D. Carroll, 1994. "How does Future Income Affect Current Consumption?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(1), pages 111-147.
    3. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1.
    4. Flavin, Marjorie A, 1981. "The Adjustment of Consumption to Changing Expectations about Future Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 974-1009, October.
    5. Gary S. Becker, 1981. "A Treatise on the Family," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck81-1.
    6. Milton Friedman, 1957. "Introduction to "A Theory of the Consumption Function"," NBER Chapters, in: A Theory of the Consumption Function, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Blundell, Richard, 1988. "Consumer Behaviour: Theory and Empirical Evidence--a Survey," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(389), pages 16-65, March.
    8. Fumio Hayashi, 1985. "The Permanent Income Hypothesis and Consumption Durability: Analysis Based on Japanese Panel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(4), pages 1083-1113.
    9. Deaton, Angus, 1992. "Understanding Consumption," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288244.
    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. Edmund Chattoe-Brown, 2013. "Why Sociology Should Use Agent Based Modelling," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(3), pages 31-41, August.

    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. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    3. Kevin Z. Chen & Karl D. Meilke & Calum Turvey, 1999. "Income risk and farm consumption behavior," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 20(2), pages 173-183, March.
    4. Esa Karonen & Mikko Niemelä, 2022. "Necessity-Rich, Leisure-Poor: The Long-Term Relationship Between Income Cohorts and Consumption Through Age-Period-Cohort Analysis," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 599-620, September.
    5. Jim Malley & Hassan Molana, 2003. "The Life-Cycle-Permanent- Income Hypothesis: A Reinterpretation and Supporting Evidence," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 138, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    6. Bram De Rock & Bart Capéau, 2015. "The implications of household size and children for life-cycle saving," Working Paper Research 286, National Bank of Belgium.
    7. Nalewaik, Jeremy J., 2006. "Current consumption and future income growth: Synthetic panel evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 2239-2266, November.
    8. Alessandro Federici & Pierluigi Montalbano, 2012. "Macroeconomic volatility, consumption behaviour and welfare: A cross-country analysis," Working Paper Series 3612, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    9. Apps, Patricia & Rees, Ray, 2004. "Life Cycle Time Allocation and Saving in an Imperfect Capital Market," IZA Discussion Papers 1036, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Ulrike Malmendier & Leslie Sheng Shen, 2024. "Scarred Consumption," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 322-355, January.
    11. Jim Malley & Hassan Molana, 2002. "The Life-Cycle-Permanent-Income Model: A Reinterpretation and Supporting Evidence," Working Papers 2002_17, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    12. D'Orlando, Fabio & Sanfilippo, Eleonora, 2010. "Behavioral foundations for the Keynesian consumption function," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1035-1046, December.
    13. Brunila, Anne, 1996. "Fiscal policy and private consumption: Saving decisions: Evidence from Finland," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 28/1996, Bank of Finland.
    14. Joseph P. Dejuan & John J. Seater & Tony S. Wirjanto, 2010. "Testing the Stochastic Implications of the Permanent Income Hypothesis Using Canadian Provincial Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(1), pages 89-108, February.
    15. Caliendo, Frank & Aadland, David, 2007. "Short-term planning and the life-cycle consumption puzzle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1392-1415, April.
    16. van de Ven, Justin, 2011. "A structural dynamic microsimulation model of household savings and labour supply," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 2054-2070, July.
    17. Khanal, Aditya & Mishra, Ashok, 2016. "Income Risk, Habit Formation, and Precautionary Savings: The Case of Rural Households," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235597, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Aleksandar Vasilev, 2015. "Modeling Real Private Consumption Expenditure in Bulgaria after the Currency Board Implementation (1997-2005)," Zagreb International Review of Economics and Business, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 18(1), pages 81-89, May.
    19. Lugilde, Alba & Bande, Roberto & Riveiro, Dolores, 2017. "Precautionary Saving: a review of the theory and the evidence," MPRA Paper 77511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Hiroaki Hayakawa, 2019. "Time Preferences, Intertemporal Optimization, and the Permanent Income-Life Cycle Hypothesis," Growth, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 6(1), pages 1-11.

    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:sae:socres:v:6:y:2001:i:3:p:1-12. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.