Households borrowed heavily to preserve their lifestyles amid economic insecurity.

Evidence

In the past 25 years, the easiest way to close the gap between what you were earning and what you needed to preserve your position was to borrow money. To accomplish this, there had to be a huge expansion of credit (Rajan, 2010; Hyman, 2011). During the 1970s, many lower-income and minority households had long had only limited access to credit (Krippner, 2011). But, after 1985, securitization was used to create bonds not just from mortgages, but second mortgages, home loans, student loans and credit card debt. This propelled a broad expansion of the credit availability to all households (Kendall, 1996; Erturk et al., 2007; Rajan, 2010). — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 41

Categorization

• DEFINE: Securitization is defined operationally here: the packaging of various debt types (second mortgages, student loans, credit card debt) into bonds, which is the mechanism that expanded credit.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in financialization of everyday household life — this is the classic ‘borrowing to defend one’s standard of living’ thesis from Crouch’s privatized Keynesianism and Hacker’s ‘great risk shift.’ — connects to: Top-end wealth concentration intensifies pressure on lower households to maintain relative lifestyles. — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 40; Citizens and governments alike borrowed heavily, embedding finance in everyday life. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 150; Most US households stayed averse to financial risk even during the 1990s boom — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 109 (+4 more)

Related

• Households are pushed into financial markets that promise lifestyle advancement. (similarity 0.83)
• Citizens and governments alike borrowed heavily, embedding finance in everyday life. (similarity 0.83)
• Financialization expanded by selling financial products directly to households (similarity 0.82)
• Households signal financialization through risk-taking, relaxed debt attitudes, and speculative strategies (similarity 0.82)
• Households in social democracies face pressure to adopt finance culture too. (similarity 0.82)
• The erosion of pensions and benefits pushed households toward commercial financial products. (similarity 0.81)
• Household financialization involves adopting new entrepreneurial mindsets, not just buying more financial products. (similarity 0.81)
• Financialization forced households to adopt a proactive finance culture beyond just consuming more debt. (similarity 0.80)
• Financialization of households is stratified by class, not uniform (similarity 0.79)
• Most US households stayed averse to financial risk even during the 1990s boom (similarity 0.79)
• Acceptance of debt and risk differs sharply by socioeconomic class (similarity 0.79)
• Top-end wealth concentration intensifies pressure on lower households to maintain relative lifestyles. (similarity 0.79)
• Financial risk-taking emerges in middle classes as a response to top-end inequality. (similarity 0.79)
• Financialized risk-taking is concentrated in the upper middle class, not spread across all earners (similarity 0.79)
• Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein — The Emergence of a Finance Culture in American Households, 1989-2007 (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Citizens and governments alike borrowed heavily, embedding finance in everyday life. #expands (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 150
• Austerity shifted welfare back to families financed by private household debt #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 247
• The erosion of pensions and benefits pushed households toward commercial financial products. #expands (0.80) — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 55
• Households signal financialization through risk-taking, relaxed debt attitudes, and speculative strategies #expands (0.78) — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 48
• Most US households stayed averse to financial risk even during the 1990s boom #contradicts (0.75) — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 109
• Financialization forced households to adopt a proactive finance culture beyond just consuming more debt. #qualifies (0.72) — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 46