Social and psychological determinants of consumption: Evidence for the lipstick effect during the Great Recession

Daniel MacDonald and Yasemin Dildar

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2020, vol. 86, issue C

Abstract: Using the Great Recession as a case study, we evaluate the evidence for the “lipstick effect” by analyzing expenditures on cosmetics products using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditures Survey. We find a significant increase in average cosmetics expenditures among younger women (age 18–40) during the Great Recession. The increase occurred regardless of marital or employment status, providing evidence against popular explanations for the lipstick effect in the academic literature: to wit, that women purchase more lipstick either to attract a mate during uncertain economic times, or to increase the probability of staying or becoming employed during the economic downturn. Rather, we find evidence to support the claim that the lipstick effect is caused by a substitution away from spending on women's clothes.

Keywords: Consumer economics; Lipstick effect; Great Recession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804319304884
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:soceco:v:86:y:2020:i:c:s2214804319304884

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2020.101527

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().