IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednls/86736.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Have Consumers Been Deleveraging?

Author

Abstract

Since its peak in summer 2008, U.S. consumers? indebtedness has fallen by more than a trillion dollars. Over roughly the same period, charge-offs?the removal of obligations from consumers? credit reports because of defaults?have risen sharply, especially on loans secured by houses, which make up about 80 percent of consumer liabilities. An important question for gauging the behavior of U.S. consumers is how to interpret these two trends. Is the reduction in debts entirely attributable to defaults, or are consumers actively reducing their debts? In this post, we demonstrate that a significant part of the debt reduction was produced by consumers borrowing less and paying off debt more quickly?a process often called deleveraging.

Suggested Citation

  • Meta Brown & Andrew F. Haughwout & Donghoon Lee & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2011. "Have Consumers Been Deleveraging?," Liberty Street Economics 20110321, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:86736
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2011/03/have-consumers-become-more-frugal.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreclosures; Defaults; Mortgages; Consumer debt; Deleveraging;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

    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:fip:fednls:86736. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.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.