Retrieval Failures and Consumption Smoothing: A Field Experiment on Seasonal Poverty

Ned Augenblick, B. Kelsey Jack, Supreet Kaur, Felix Masiye and Nicholas Swanson

No 35430, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Individuals may fail to recall and use information they already know when making decisions. We empirically investigate whether such “retrieval failures” distort consumption smoothing behavior among Zambian farmers, who derive their income from one annual harvest and then spend it down over the course of the year. We document that individuals underestimate upcoming spending by 50%, creating scope for under-saving. In order to improve recall, we randomize an intervention that prompts individuals to think through their future expenses associatively in categories—without providing any external information or guidance. Treated individuals increase “remembered” expenses by 36-60%; as predicted by the memory literature, effects are concentrated among small, irregular, and stochastic items. Immediate spending drops and, six weeks after the intervention, treated households hold 15% higher savings. They subsequently enter the hungry season—the final months of the year when consumption typically declines sharply—with one additional month of savings, leading to a flatter spending profile over the year. Households use the increased savings to self-finance additional farm investment, resulting in a 9% increase in the next year’s crop revenue. We replicate the intervention’s impact on beliefs among low-income Americans, suggesting that retrieval failures generalize across settings and populations.

JEL-codes: D14 D15 O12 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
Note: DEV
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35430.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35430

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35430
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().