Consumption Volatility, Liquidity Constraints and Household Welfare

We evaluate the impact of increased income uncertainty and financial liberalisation in the US on consumption volatility and household welfare. We estimate Euler equations and measure the volatility of unpredictable changes in consumption as the squared residuals. We directly control for liquidity constraints using SCF data on access to credit, and document that despite the increase in household debt between 1983 and 2007, there was no decline in the proportion of liquidity constrained households. Consumption volatil-ity increased significantly over this period, especially for liquidity constrained households, indicating substantial welfare losses.