Download or read book Towards Understanding Savings Behavior Among Low income Households in the United States written by Matthew A. Scogin and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Comparison of Two Savings Measures written by Stuart J. Heckman and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the application of the institutional theory of saving behavior, a framework is established for understanding determinants of savings among low-income households. Multiple survey years from the Survey of Consumer Finances were used to investigate the research questions through the use of means testing and logistic regression. Two different savings measurements were used: a broad measure and a narrow measure.
Download or read book Striving to Save written by Margaret Sherrard Sherraden and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Striving to Save will inform and inspire social policy with its breakthrough approach in understanding how low-income families make ends meet while striving to make a better life for themselves and their families. Scholarly work in savings, debt, household finance, and behavior economics will benefit from this pioneering study that provides real-life context for some of the most important issues of our day." ---Tom Shapiro, Brandeis University "The central contribution of the book is to use original qualitative research to provide readers with a nuanced understanding of the financial difficulties facing low-income households, their financial decision-making processes, and their paths to saving and building assets over time. The book provides an essential corrective to the unidimensional view of poor households as unable and unwilling to save." ---Michael Barr, University of Michigan In Striving to Save, Margaret Sherrard Sherraden and Amanda Moore McBride examine savings in eighty-four working families with low incomes, including fifty-nine families who participated in a groundbreaking program of matched savings and financial education. In-depth interviews with these families, along with savings and survey data, shed light on saving in low-income households. The book concludes with recommended public policy approaches for increasing savings in households that are striving to save. Margaret Sherrard Sherraden is Professor of Social Work at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Amanda Moore McBride is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Washington University, St. Louis.
Download or read book Individual and Institutional Factors Related to Low Income Household Saving Behavior written by Stuart Heckman and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research sought to further understanding of factors related to low-income household saving behavior. Saving behavior, defined as whether a household spent less than income, was analyzed by applying institutional theory, which proposes that households' institutional environment has a substantial effect on financial decisions. Two logistic regression models were used to test the effects of variables on saving behavior; the first logit was based on the life cycle hypothesis and the second added noneconomic individual factors (i.e., social networks, financial literacy, and psychological variables) and institutional factors (i.e., access, incentives, and facilitation). Institutional factors, including the number of institutions used, credit access, and having an employer sponsored retirement plan, had significant effects even after controlling for the effect of variables based on the life cycle model, suggesting that promoting institutional access and facilitation - especially through employer-provided plans - may encourage saving behavior among low-income households.
Download or read book Can the Poor Save written by Michael Sherraden and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many policymakers argue that the best poverty policy not only provides cash to the poor for subsistence but also incentives and structures that encourage long-term social and economic improvement. As part of this, they make the case for Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), a new policy proposal designed to help the poor save and to build assets. This book explores IDAs to determine their effectiveness. IDAs are matched savings accounts targeted on low-income, low-wealth individuals. Savings in IDAs are used for home ownership, post-secondary education, small business development, and other purposes. Do IDAs work? If they do, for whom? And does how an IDA is designed determine savings outcomes? This volume is the first analysis of matched savings by the poor to use data from monthly bank statements. It comes at a critical time, as debate rages over the merits of individual social security accounts. IDAs also respond to policy that is becoming more asset based and less inclusive of the poor. The authors argue for the efficacy of IDAs to counter this tendency. They find that while savings outcomes vary among participants, no characteristics (such as low income or public assistance) preclude saving. They examine effects of IDA design (the match rate, savings targets, and the use of automatic transfer) on savings results and analyze factors that influence varying rates of saving and spending over time. They conclude that financial education and other support services, though costly, improve savings performance. To address the issue of cost they suggest a two-tier system of IDA design, one with broad access and simple services and the other with targeted access and intensive services. Can the Poor Save? offers a wealth of lessons to those interested in saving and asset accumulation among the poor. It not only breaks new ground in the scientific study of savings behavior, but also offers concrete, evidence-based recommendations to improve policies designed to encourage the poor to save and how to make such policies more inclusive."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book An Explanation of the Behavior of Personal Savings in the United States in Recent Years written by Eytan Sheshinski and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sharp increase in the real interest rates in the U.S. in the 1980s was expected to induce a higher personal saving rate. Actually, between 1981 and 1983 the personal saving rate fell from 7.5 percent to 5.4 percent and for the 1985-1988 period it had averaged only 4 percent even though real interest rates have remained high. We argue that one possible explanation for this negative relation between interest rates and the personal saving rate is the large fraction of wealth, especially financial wealth, held by persons over 65 years old (this group has received more than 50 percent of all interest income in the U.S. during this period). Life cycle theory suggests, as we demonstrate, that the wealth effect created by an increase in the rate of interest reduces the savings of old persons and raises savings of the young and hence the effect on aggregate savings depends on the age distribution in the population.
Download or read book Understanding why High Income Households Save More Than Low Income Households written by Mark Huggett and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Role of Institutions In Low income Households Saving Behavior written by Jami Curley and published by . This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Financial Diaries written by Jonathan Morduch and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the groundbreaking U.S. Financial Diaries project (http://www.usfinancialdiaries.org/), which follows the lives of 235 low- and middle-income families as they navigate through a year, the authors challenge popular assumptions about how Americans earn, spend, borrow, and save-- and they identify the true causes of distress and inequality for many working Americans.
Download or read book Can the Poor Save written by Mark Schreiner and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many policymakers argue that the best poverty policy not only provides cash to the poor for subsistence but also incentives and structures that encourage long-term social and economic improvement. As part of this, they make the case for Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), a new policy proposal designed to help the poor save and to build assets. This book explores IDAs to determine their effectiveness. IDAs are matched savings accounts targeted on low-income, low-wealth individuals. Savings in IDAs are used for home ownership, post-secondary education, small business development, and other purposes. Do IDAs work? If they do, for whom? And does how an IDA is designed determine savings outcomes? This volume is the first analysis of matched savings by the poor to use data from monthly bank statements. It comes at a critical time, as debate rages over the merits of individual social security accounts. IDAs also respond to policy that is becoming more asset based and less inclusive of the poor. The authors argue for the efficacy of IDAs to counter this tendency. They find that while savings outcomes vary among participants, no characteristics (such as low income or public assistance) preclude saving. They examine effects of IDA design (the match rate, savings targets, and the use of automatic transfer) on savings results and analyze factors that influence varying rates of saving and spending over time. They conclude that financial education and other support services, though costly, improve savings performance. To address the issue of cost they suggest a two-tier system of IDA design, one with broad access and simple services and the other with targeted access and intensive services. Can the Poor Save? offers a wealth of lessons to those interested in saving and asset accumulation among the poor. It not only breaks new ground in the scientific study of savings behavior, but also offers concrete, evidence-based recommendations to improve policies designed to encourage the poor to save and how to make such policies more inclusive.
Download or read book A Fragile Balance written by J. Collins and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-03-13 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Fragile Balance examines strategies to promote emergency savings, especially among underserved households.
Download or read book When a Nudge Isn t Enough written by Erin Todd Bronchetti and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that the default options implicit in economic choices (e.g., 401(k) savings by white-collar workers) have extraordinarily large effects on decision-making. This study presents a field experiment that evaluates the effect of defaults on savings among a highly policy-relevant population: low-income tax filers. In the control condition, tax filers could choose (i.e., opt in) to receive some of their federal tax refund in the form of U.S. Savings Bonds. In the treatment condition, a fraction of the tax refund was automatically directed to U.S. Savings Bonds unless tax filers actively chose another allocation. We find that the opt-out default had no impact on savings behavior. Furthermore, our treatment estimate is sufficiently precise to reject effects as small as one-fifth of the participation effects found in the 401(k) literature. Ancillary evidence suggests that this "nudge" was ineffective in part because the low-income tax filers in our study had targeted plans to spend their refunds. These results suggest that choice architecture based on defaults may be less effective in certain policy-relevant settings, particularly where intentions are strong
Download or read book Assets for the Poor written by Thomas M. Shapiro and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2001-05-17 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, average household wealth in the United States has declined among all but the richest families, with a near 80 percent drop among the nation's poorest families. Although the national debate about inequality has focused on income, it is wealth—the private assets amassed and passed on within families—that provides the extra economic cushion needed to move beyond mere day-to-day survival. Assets for the Poor is the first full-scale investigation into the importance of family wealth and the need for policies to encourage asset-building among the poor. Assets for the Poor shows how institutional mechanisms designed to encourage acquisition of capital and property favor middle-class and high-income families. For example, the aggregate value of home mortgage tax deductions far outweighs the dollar amount of the subsidies provided by Section 8 rental vouchers and public housing. Banking definitions of creditworthiness largely exclude minorities, and welfare rules have made it nearly impossible for single mothers to accumulate savings, let alone stocks or real estate. Due to persistent residential segregation, even those minority families who do own homes are often denied equal access to better schools and public services. The research in this volume shows that the poor do make use of the assets they have. Cash gifts—although small in size—are frequent within families and often lead to such positive results as homebuying and debt reduction, while tangible assets such as tools and cars help increase employment prospects. Assets for the Poor examines policies such as Individual Development Account tax subsidies to reward financial savings among the poor, and more liberal credit rules to make borrowing easier and less costly. The contributors also offer thoughtful advice for bringing the poor into mainstream savings institutions and warn against developing asset building policies at the expense of existing safety net programs. Asset-building for low-income families is a powerful idea that offers hope to families searching for a way out of poverty. Assets for the Poor challenges current thinking regarding poverty reduction policies and proposes a major shift in the way we think about families and how they make a better life. A Volume in the Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building
Download or read book When a Nudge Isn t Enough Defaults and Saving Among Low Income Tax Filers written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Understanding Why High Income Households Save More Than Low Income Households written by Mark Huggett and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We use a calibrated life-cycle model to evaluate why high income households save as a group a much higher fraction of income than do low income households in US cross-section data. We find that (1) age and relatively permanent earnings differences across households together with the structure of the US social security system are sufficient to replicate this fact, (2) without social security the model economies still produce large differences in saving rates across income groups and (3) purely temporary earnings shocks of the magnitude estimated in US data alter only slightly the saving rates of high and low income households. Keyword(s): Saving; Distribution; Life cycle.
Download or read book Effect of Financial Resources and Credit on Savings Behavior of Low Income Families written by Joan Koonce Lewis and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examined the effects of available financial resources, credit use, savings attitudes, methods of saving, and demographic characteristics on the change in low-income families' real savings (change in real net worth) from 1983 to 1986. Multiple regression results indicated that having a higher level of education, having larger families, and expecting financial assistance from friends or relatives in emergency situations increased real savings. In addition, having higher outstanding 1983 noninstallment loan balances increased real savings, while having lower 1983 net worth increased real savings from 1983 to 1986.
Download or read book Inclusion in the American Dream written by Michael Sherraden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-21 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inclusion in the American Dream brings together leading scholars and policy experts on the topic of asset building, particularly as this relates to public policy. The typical American household accumulates most of its assets in home equity and retirement accounts, both of which are subsidized through the tax system. But the poor, for the most part, do not participate in these asset accumulation policies. The challenge is to expand the asset-based policy structure so that everyone is included.
