Consumer Durables and Installment Debt: A Study of American Households, 1967-1970 (ICPSR 7497)

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This four-year panel study investigated two interrelated aspects of consumer behavior: expenditures on major consumer durable goods and the use of installment credit. Over the course of four years, the study examined trends in these two important characteristics of households, factors underlying these trends, and elements that could alter their relationships. In each of the four panel interviews, detailed questions were asked regarding the family income, purchases of durables, and level of financial debt. The extent of the family's holdings of financial assets including houses, amounts in savings and checking accounts, value of stocks and bonds, etc., was also ascertained. Information was collected on stocks of consumer durables owned at the time of the first interview, and initial stocks of automobiles and subsequent changes in them. Extensive data were gathered on attitudes toward the use of various financial instruments (particularly installment debt), the level of the family's satisfaction with its current assets, and the family's subjective analysis of its past financial progress and future prospects. A total of 1,434 families completed all four interviews. The four-year merged data are available in two versions: Part 1 contains all the family data including information on the first car, usually the newest, owned at the time of each interview. Part 2 comprises all of the variables in Part 1, as well as approximately 400 additional variables that provide information about each car (up to three) owned by panel families at the time of each interview during the four-year period.

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