9/5/20: Some uncomfortable facts on the U.S. wealth distribution since 1989

The distributional effects of COVID19 pandemic impact on the labour markets in the U.S. will likely result in a massive debasement of the national wealth shares of the 'Main Street' segment of American society (the 90 percent) and a further increases in the national wealth share of the top 10 percent. So much is rather clear from the data on the labour markets (e.g.: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/05/8520-path-of-tornado-us-labour-force.html).

But this process is not a unique feature of the current 'ideology' prevailing in the White House, nor is it a unique feature of the 'Republican Party ideology'. Historically, both, the Democratic Party Presidencies and the Republican Party Presidencies since the start of the 1990s on have been responsible for the dramatic drops in the share of national net worth accruing to those outside the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution. Here is the data through 4Q 2019:

The last time, the 'Main Street America' enjoyed sustained increases in net worth was during the tenure of George H. W. Bush. Since then, there have been just one short-lived period of increase in net worth, with subsequent declines erasing fully those gains: the Dot.Com bubble during the tail end of the Clinton and the starting part of the George W. Bush administrations.

And the current Presidency is actually somewhat exceptional to the trend: under Trump Administration, American's Main Street witnessed the lowest rates of decline in their share of the national net worth of 'just' 0.13% per annum, of all post-1992 administrations. In fact, the share of the country's net worth accruing to the bottom 50 percent of Americans has risen under the Trump Presidency tenure at the fastest annualized clip since the data series started.

In simple terms, American policies of destroying the prosperity of the majority of the country's population are not reflective of the 'political divide'. Both, Democratic and Republican Presidencies have led to the effective debasement of the wealth of the American Main Street. And, in equally simple terms, the Trump Administration tenure so far has been more benign to the bottom 50 percent of the American wealth distribution than any presidency since 1989.

Like it or not, but the data is quite telling.

23/4/19: Property, Property and More Property: U.S. Household Wealth Bubble

According to the St. Luis Fed, U.S. household wealth has reached a historical high of 535% of the U.S. GDP (see: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/where-inflation-hiding-asset-prices).

There is a problem, however, with the above data: it reflects some dodgy ways of counting 'household wealth'. For two primary reasons: firstly, it ignores concentration risk arising from wealth inequality, and secondly, it ignores concentration risk arising from households' exposure to property markets. A good measure of liquidity risk controlled allocation of wealth is ownership of liquid equities (note: equities, of course, and are subject to Fed-funded bubble dynamics). The chart below - via https://www.topdowncharts.com/single-post/2019/04/22/Weekly-SP-500-ChartStorm---21-April-2019 shows a pretty dire state of equity markets (the source of returns on asset demand side being swamped over the last decade by shares buybacks and M&As), but it also shows that households did not benefit materially from the equities bubble.

In other words, controlling for liquidity risk, the Fed's meme of historically high household wealth is seriously challenged. And controlling for wealth inequality (distributional features of wealth), it is probably dubious overall.

So here's the chart showing just how absurdly property-dependent (households' home equity valuations in red line, index starting at 100 at the end of the Global Financial Crisis) the Fed 'wealth' figures (blue line, same starting index) are:

In fact, dynamically, rates of growth in household home equity have been far in excess of the rates of growth in other assets since 2012.  In that, the dynamics of the current 'sound economy' are identical (and actually more dramatic) to the 2000-2006 bubble: property, property and more property.

4/1/2015: Homeownership, House Prices and Entrepreneurship

Two papers on related topics, the link between enterprise formation and homeownership/mortgages. In the past, I wrote quite a bit about various studies covering these, especially within the context of negative equity impact of reducing entrepreneurship and funding for start ups.

In the first paper, Bracke, Philippe and Hilber, Christian A. L. and Silva, Olmo, "study the link between homeownership, mortgage debt, and entrepreneurship using a model of occupational choice and housing tenure where homeowners commit to mortgage payments."

The paper, titled "Homeownership and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Mortgage Debt and Commitment" (CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5048: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2519463) finds that, from theoretical model perspective, "as long as mortgage rates exceed the rate of interest on liquid wealth [short-term bonds, deposits etc - and this usually is the case in all markets]:

1. mortgage debt, by amplifying risk aversion, diminishes the likelihood that homeowners start a business; 
2. the negative relation between mortgage debt and entrepreneurship is more pronounced when income volatility is higher; and
3. the relation between housing wealth and entrepreneurship is ambiguously signed because of competing portfolio and hedging considerations. 

Empirical analysis by the authors "confirm these predictions. A one standard deviation increase in leverage makes a homeowner 10-12 percent less likely to become an entrepreneur."

So back to negative equity. Negative equity is significantly increasing leverage taken on by the borrower. For example: original mortgage with LTV of 75% set against property price decline of 10% generates leverage increase of 8.3 percentage points. In Irish case, same mortgage (in Dublin case) brought back to current valuations of the property from the peak prices pre-crisis implies a leverage increase of, roughly, 50 percentage points, which is, roughly an increase of 12 standard deviations.


The second study is by Jensen, Thais Laerkholm and Leth‐Petersen, Søren and Nanda, Ramana, titled "Housing Collateral, Credit Constraints and Entrepreneurship - Evidence from a Mortgage Reform" (CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10260: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2529930). The paper looks at "how a mortgage reform that exogenously increased access to credit had an impact on entrepreneurship, using individual-level micro data from Denmark."

The authors find that "a $30,000 increase in credit availability led to a 12 basis point increase in entrepreneurship, equivalent to a 4% increase in the number of entrepreneurs. New entrants were more likely to start businesses in sectors where they had no prior experience, and were more likely to fail than those who did not benefit from the reform."

What does this mean? "Our results provide evidence that credit constraints do affect entrepreneurship, but that the overall magnitudes are small. Moreover, the marginal individuals selecting into entrepreneurship when constraints are relaxed may well be starting businesses that are of lower quality than the average existing businesses, leading to an increase in churning entry that does not translate into a sustained increase in the overall level of entrepreneurship."

So the study basically shows that mortgage credit constraints in Denmark are not highly important in determining the rate of successful entrepreneurship. But the study covers only intensive margin constraints - in other words it covers credit availability increases over and above normal operating credit markets. This does not help our understanding of what happens in the markets where credit constraints are severe.