Excerpt
Excerpt
Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained. Shawn Cole, 2008, Book Chapter, "Despite widespread interest by academics, businesspeople, and policymakers, little is known about the financial behavior of low-income individuals, particularly the unbanked and underbanked. We examine the spending patterns of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households using a new database and focus on differences in spending as a function of consumers’ credit constraints. Our work leverages a unique and proprietary data set of spending information on more than 1.5 million individuals to shed light on important questions at the intersection of consumer credit and consumer spending: Do credit-constrained consumers spend money more quickly than less constrained consumers?"