{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":71,"pdf_page":79,"physical_index":79,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"04ac65f86b7a155422b956ae0d18559fc62d2d485e930d95594049608403dabe"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"So, spending increased roughly in proportion to increasing real wages. But what did people spend their wages on? To a significant extent, people spent their disposable income on durable commodities. Based on Department of Commerce data, between 1925 and 1998 the value in 1998 dollars of consumer durables in the US economy increased from \\$32 billion to \\$2,418.8 billion (this excludes the value of fixed residential assets, which will be discussed later in this chapter)—a startling seventy-five-fold increase. Using a chain-quantity index measure—which better controls for variability in the purchasing power of the dollar and so gives a more reliable estimate of changes in volume of goods—output of consumer durables still increased more than twenty-onefold between 1925 and 1998 (see table in Appendix 1). Between 1925 and 1998 the US population increased by 2.35 times (from 115,000,000 to 270,000,000) so output of consumer durables per capita increased thirty-two-fold, measured in constant dollars, and ninefold according to the chain-quantity index measure. Most of these goods were destined for the domestic market. According to Avner Ofer’s (2006, p. 178) analysis, over the postwar period in the United States, spending on durable consumer goods grew by 1.2 times as much as income, while consumption as a whole grew slightly less than did income (with income elasticity of 0.94). Economic historian Martha Olney (1991) shows that the shift in the economy toward consumer durables can be traced to the 1920s, which witnessed a “consumer durables revolution.” By this Olney means a structural shift in consumer tastes towards consumer durables. Comparing the periods 1898–1916 and 1922–1929, Olney finds that spending on consumer durables went up and savings declined. Spending on durables doubled, from 3.7 percent of disposable income before the First World War to 7.2 percent afterward, while savings nearly halved, from 6.4 percent to 3.8 percent. As Olney (1990, p. 49) notes: “Such a sharp decline in personal saving rate is astounding, particularly since the 1920s were rather prosperous years and we usually expect savings rates to climb, not fall, during periods of prosperity.” As we have seen, a low saving rate, in conjunction with ongoing spending on consumer durables, was to be the pattern for much of the rest of the century.44 It continued, and indeed intensified, in the postwar era. In 1957, for example, a Federal Reserve study of patterns of credit and consumption drew attention to the shift from consumers buying services from companies that owned durable assets, to consumers acquiring durables to provide services (Garon 2012, p. 319).\n\nEmpirical Pattern in the United States\n\n71","previous_page":70,"next_page":72}