I argue that the offsetting effect of public pension contributions on household retirement saving depends on how closely the public pension programme imitates a private retirement saving plan (i.e. the ‘actuarial’ content of the public pension programme) – the closer the design of the...

With ageing populations, OECD governments are searching for policies to increase retirement incomes. The UK government has introduced a series of policies, including the introduction of Personal Pensions from April 1988, of Stakeholder Pensions from April 2001, and the planned introduction of a...

The paper examines the effect of household financial indebtedness on the psychological well-being of mothers, using a large household survey of families with children for Britain. Although some existing studies find a link between debt and depression, they tend to utilise small and often highly...

We describe the trajectory of pension reform in the United Kingdom, which has focussed on keeping the cost of public pension programmes down during a period of steady population ageing whilst attempting to maintain an adequate minimum level of income security for low income households in...

The ‘financial accelerator’ model when applied to households states that shocks to household balance sheets (primarily changes in house prices) amplify fluctuations in consumer spending by tightening or relaxing collateral constraints on borrowing. We construct an alternative model where...

Recent household financial models predict that collateral-constrained households are more likely to increase debt-financed spending in response to rising house values. We augment this model to consider the use of unsecured debt such as credit cards. Using household panel data, we consider...

This paper investigates the existence of liquidity constraints facing entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom. Using a household-level panel data set, entry to selfemployment is shown to be a function of household net worth. We use inheritances and unanticipated movements in house prices as...

We utilise questions concerning individual ‘debt literacy’ incorporated into market research data on households’ unsecured debt positions to examine the association between consumer credit and individual financial literacy. We examine the relationship between individual responses to debt...

We survey a representative sample of UK consumers on their understanding of core ‘financial literacy’ concepts in consumer credit. We find levels of financial literacy are generally low in the population. We also find levels of financial literacy are on average actually lower among those who...

We use survey data from a sample of UK households to analyse the association between financial literacy and consumer credit portfolios. Among users of consumer credit there is much variation in levels of financial literacy. Borrowers with poor financial literacy hold higher shares of high cost...