The influence of housing and durables on personal saving

Leah M. Cook, Richard W. Kopcke and Alicia Munnell

New England Economic Review, 1991, issue Nov, 3-16

Abstract: The rate of national saving declined sharply in the 1980s. Some of the explanations for this puzzling performance have considered the influence of capital gains, a reduction in the need for precautionary saving, a decline in the need for retirement saving, the effect of slower income growth, and a host of other factors. ; This article explores the relationship between personal saving and the treatment of owner-occupied housing and consumer durable goods in the national income and product accounts. It examhaes the potential consequences of understating the returns on owner-occupied houses and overstating the consumption of services of durable goods. The article concludes that the greater value of homeowners investment in their residences after the 1970s and, to a lesser extent, rising outlays for consumer durable goods in the 1980s, depressed reported personal saving during the last decade, as the national accounts underestimated income and overestimated consumption.

Keywords: Saving; and; investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/neer/neer1991/neer691a.pdf (application/pdf)

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:fip:fedbne:y:1991:i:nov:p:3-16

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in New England Economic Review from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Spozio ().