Who Bears the Cost of Recessions? The Role of House Prices and Household Debt

Atif Mian and A. Sufi

Chapter Chapter 5 in Handbook of Macroeconomics, 2016, vol. 2, pp 255-296 from Elsevier

Abstract: This chapter reviews empirical estimates of differential income and consumption growth across individuals during recessions. Most existing studies examine the variation in income and consumption growth across individuals by sorting on ex ante or contemporaneous income or consumption levels. We build on this literature by showing that differential shocks to household net worth coming from elevated household debt and the collapse in house prices play an underappreciated role. Using zip codes in the United States as the unit of analysis, we show that the decline in numerous measures of consumption during the Great Recession was much larger in zip codes that experienced a sharp decline in housing net worth. In the years prior to the recession, these same zip codes saw high house price growth, a substantial expansion of debt by homeowners, and high consumption growth. We discuss what models seem most consistent with this striking pattern in the data, and we highlight the increasing body of macroeconomic evidence on the link between household debt and business cycles. Our main conclusion is that housing and household debt should play a larger role in models exploring the importance of household heterogeneity on macroeconomic outcomes and policies.

Keywords: Consumption; Recession; Distribution; Inequality; Housing; Household debt; E21; E32; D12; D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:macchp:v2-255

DOI: 10.1016/bs.hesmac.2016.03.005

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