IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednls/90681.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Update on How Households Are Using Stimulus Checks

Author

Abstract

In October, we reported evidence on how households used their first economic impact payments, which they started to receive in mid-April 2020 as part of the CARES Act, and how they expected to use a second stimulus payment. In this post, we exploit new survey data to examine how households used the second round of stimulus checks, issued starting at the end of December 2020 as part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, and we investigate how they plan to use the third round authorized in March under the American Rescue Plan Act. We find remarkable stability in how stimulus checks are used over the three rounds, with a slight decline in the share dedicated to consumption and a proportional increase in the share saved. The average share of stimulus payments that households set aside for consumption—what economists call the marginal propensity to consume (MPC)—declined from 29 percent in the first round to 26 percent in the second and to 25 percent in the third.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Armantier & Leo Goldman & Gizem Koşar & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2021. "An Update on How Households Are Using Stimulus Checks," Liberty Street Economics 20210407, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:90681
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2021/04/an-update-on-how-households-are-using-stimulus-checks.html
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joe Piacentini & Harley Frazis & Peter B. Meyer & Michael Schultz & Leo Sveikauskas, 2022. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Labor Markets and Inequality," Economic Working Papers 551, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    2. Albuquerque, Bruno & Green, Georgina, 2023. "Financial concerns and the marginal propensity to consume in COVID times: Evidence from UK survey data," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Stephanie M. Wilshusen, 2022. "Consumer Credit Card Payment Deferrals During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Consumer Finance Institute discussion papers 93694, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    4. Jack Dunbar & Christopher J. Kurz & Geng Li & Maria D. Tito, 2024. "In the Driver's Seat: Pandemic Fiscal Stimulus and Light Vehicles," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-013, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    stimulus checks; spending;

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

    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:90681. 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.