IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/emodwp/em21-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Living with Reduced Income: an Analysis of Household Financial Vulnerability Under COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Midões, Catarina
  • Seré, Mateo

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has led to substantial reductions in earnings. We propose a new measure of financial vulnerability, computable through survey data, to determine whether households can withstand a certain income shock for a defined period of time. Using data from the ECB Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) we analyse preexisting financial vulnerability in seven EU countries. We find that income support is essential for many families: 47.2 million individuals, out of the 243 million considered, cannot afford three months of food and housing expenses without privately earned income. Differences across countries are stark, and those born outside of the EU are especially vulnerable. Through a tax-benefit microsimulation exercise, we then derive household net income when employees are laid-off and awarded the COVID-19 employment protection benefits enacted in the different countries. Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 employment protection schemes awarded are extremely effective in reducing the number of vulnerable individuals. The relative importance of rent and mortgage suspensions in alleviating vulnerability is highly country dependent.

Suggested Citation

  • Midões, Catarina & Seré, Mateo, 2020. "Living with Reduced Income: an Analysis of Household Financial Vulnerability Under COVID-19," EUROMOD Working Papers EM21/20, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:emodwp:em21-20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/euromod/em21-20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Annamaria Lusardi & Daniel Schneider & Peter Tufano, 2011. "Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(1 (Spring), pages 83-150.
    2. Raj Chetty & Adam Szeidl, 2007. "Consumption Commitments and Risk Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 831-877.
    3. Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1982. "Minimum Wages and the Demand for Labor," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(3), pages 365-380, July.
    4. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2007. "Life-Cycle Prices and Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1533-1559, December.
    5. Sutherland, Holly, 2001. "EUROMOD: an integrated European benefit-tax model: final report," EUROMOD Working Papers EM9/01, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    6. Esselink, Henk & Gijsel, Lola Hernandez-van, 2017. "The use of cash by households in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 201, European Central Bank.
    7. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2009. "Shocks, Stocks, and Socks: Smoothing Consumption Over a Temporary Income Loss," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(6), pages 1169-1192, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Economic policy > Household support

    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. Catarina Midões & Mateo Seré, 2020. "Living with reduced income: an analysis of household financial vulnerability under COVID-19," Working Papers 2008, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    2. Catarina Midões & Mateo Seré, 2022. "Living with Reduced Income: An Analysis of Household Financial Vulnerability Under COVID-19," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 125-149, May.
    3. Baker, Scott R. & Johnson, Stephanie & Kueng, Lorenz, 2024. "Financial returns to household inventory management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    4. Dora Gicheva & Justine Hastings & Sofia Villas-Boas, 2007. "Revisiting the Income Effect: Gasoline Prices and Grocery Purchases," NBER Working Papers 13614, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Christoph Basten & Andreas Fagereng & Kjetil Telle, 2016. "Saving and Portfolio Allocation Before and After Job Loss," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 293-324, March.
    6. Safoura Moeeni, 2022. "The Intergenerational Effects of Economic Sanctions," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(2), pages 269-304.
    7. Jim Been & Eduard Suari‐Andreu & Marike Knoef & Rob Alessie, 2024. "Consumption and time use responses to unemployment: Implications for the lifecycle model," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(361), pages 1-32, January.
    8. Ni, Shawn & Seol, Youn, 2014. "New evidence on excess sensitivity of household consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 80-94.
    9. Gyöngyösi, Győző & Rariga, Judit & Verner, Emil, 2021. "The anatomy of consumption in a household foreign currency debt crisis," SAFE Working Paper Series 332, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    10. Nathaniel Pattison, 2024. "Landlords as Lenders of Last Resort? Late Housing Payments During Unemployment," Departmental Working Papers 2401, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
    11. Gelman, Michael & Kariv, Shachar & Shapiro, Matthew D. & Silverman, Dan & Tadelis, Steven, 2020. "How individuals respond to a liquidity shock: Evidence from the 2013 government shutdown," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    12. David de Meza & Diane Reyniers, 2023. "Insuring Replaceable Possessions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(357), pages 271-284, January.
    13. Gathergood, John & Wylie, Daniel, 2018. "Why are some households so poorly insured?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 1-12.
    14. Chetty, Raj, 2006. "A general formula for the optimal level of social insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 1879-1901, November.
    15. Sarantis Tsiaplias, 2021. "The Welfare Implications of Unobserved Heterogeneity," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(4), pages 1029-1051, December.
    16. Stephanie von Hinke & George Leckie, 2017. "Protecting Calorie Intakes against Income Shocks," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 17/684, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    17. Choi, Kyoung Jin & Jeon, Junkee & Koo, Hyeng Keun, 2022. "Intertemporal preference with loss aversion: Consumption and risk-attitude," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    18. Tuttle, Charlotte & Beatty, Timothy K. M., 2017. "The Effects of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security in Low-Income Households," Economic Research Report 260484, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    19. Campos, Rodolfo G. & Reggio, Iliana, 2016. "Optimal unemployment insurance: Consumption versus expenditure," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 81-89.
    20. Barceló, Cristina & Villanueva, Ernesto, 2016. "The response of household wealth to the risk of job loss: Evidence from differences in severance payments," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 35-54.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ese:emodwp:em21-20. 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: Jonathan Nears (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcessuk.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.