Bangladesh’s second Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper -- “Steps Towards Change: National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction II (NSAPR II)†– provides a framework for implementing the government’s agenda during FY09-FY11. First prepared by a Caretaker...

This paper looks at the overall performance of the CFPR/TUP programme using the 2002 baseline survey and 2005 repeat survey. All the topics covered in this study could be analysed more deeply, but that is beyond the scope of this paper. Our goal here is to present a descriptive overview of the...

This Selected Issues paper for the United States discusses the microeconomics of the country—household wealth and savings. Households’ consumption-saving decisions have an important bearing on the U.S. economic outlook. This paper demonstrates how households with consistently lower...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes household savings ratio in Spain. The household savings ratio has fallen to its lowest historical rate in 2012, as households cut back savings to support consumption in response to negative income shocks. Household savings fell across all households, but the...

This paper examines the role increasing personal wealth and home equity withdrawal (HEW) have had in the decline in the personal saving rate in the United States. It does so by comparing the U.S. experience with those of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Mortgage market liberalization...

Heightened uncertainty since the onset of the Great Recession has materially increased saving rates, contributing to lower consumption and GDP growth. Consistent with a model of precautionary savings in the face of uncertainty, we find for a panel of advanced economies that greater labor income...

This paper studies a panel of China's provinces over the period 1996-2009 during which urban household saving rates increased from 19 percent of disposable income to 30 percent. It finds that the increase in urban saving rates is negatively associated with the decline in real interest rates over...

This paper explores the hypothesis that the propensity to consume out of income varies in a non-linear fashion with fiscal variables, and in particular with government debt per capita. Using data from eighteen OECD countries the paper examines whether there is any empirical evidence to support...

Consumption in China is unusually low and has continued to decline as a share of GDP over the past decade. A key policy question is how to reverse this trend, and rebalance growth away from reliance on exports and investment and toward consumption. This paper investigates whether the sizable...

This paper explores the hypothesis that the propensity to consume out of income is not constant but varies, perhaps in a nonlinear fashion, with fiscal variables. It examines whether there is any empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that households move from non-Ricardian to Ricardian...