Corporate Profits and Personal Misery: Credit, Gender, and the Distribution of Income

John Watkins ()

Journal of Economic Issues, 2009, vol. 43, issue 2, 413-422

Abstract: Financial institutions engage in financial innovation to increase profits. The resulting increases in consumer debt, however, make low income groups vulnerable to declines in income; households headed by women are particularly vulnerable. Consumers are disadvantaged given the asymmetry between business and consumer choices. Consumers use credit for many reasons including pecuniary emulation and supporting others, support that often falls to women. The paper examines the ratio of debt to financial assets, the ratio of debt to income, the ratio of dept payments to income, and the rate of bankruptcy as indicators of the fragility of household balance sheets.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/JEI0021-3624430214 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:mes:jeciss:v:43:y:2009:i:2:p:413-422

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MJEI20

DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624430214

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Issues from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().