Working-Class Household Consumption Smoothing in Interwar Britain
利用英国劳工部1937/38年家庭支出调查的新发现数据，研究两次世界大战期间工人阶级家庭如何通过19种信贷/储蓄工具平滑消费以应对疾病、失业和死亡等负面冲击，发现低收入家庭和家庭生命周期早期阶段使用更频繁。
We examine the strategies interwar working-class British households used to “smooth” consumption over time and guard against negative contingencies such as illness, unemployment, and death. Newly discovered returns from the U.K. Ministry of Labour's 1937/38 Household Expenditure Survey are used to fully categorize expenditure smoothing via nineteen credit/savings vehicles. We find that households made extensive use of expenditure-smoothing devices. Families' reliance on expenditure-smoothing is shown to be inversely related to household income, while households also used these mechanisms more intensively during expenditure crisis phases of the family life cycle, especially the years immediately after new household formation.