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Has There Been a Twentieth-Century Consumer Durables Revolution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Harold G. Vatter
Harold G. Vatter
Affiliation:
Portland State College
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Extract

Examination of approximately a score of U.S. economic history texts indicates that the hypothesis of a change in the structure of consumer preferences in favor of durable goods in the twentieth century, and thereby in the product structure of consumption, has strongly influenced economic historians. By implication, the alleged structural change is unique to the twentieth century. This impression relies upon the treatment of durables expenditures by almost all of that minority of textbook writers who address themselves to the general topic of consumption.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1967

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References

The research for this analysis was completed while the writer was Lilly Faculty Research Fellow at the University of Chicago in 1964–1965. Such assistance is hereby acknowledged. Advice and statistical aid were rendered by Robert L. Thompson. Helpful criticisms were forthcoming in Professor Robert Fogel's workshop in economic history at the University of Chicago.

1 The term “structural change” in the economy will be used here appropriately to refer to a substantial, once-for-all change in the relative importance of a flow or stock category compressed into a relatively short period of time.

2 Relevant quotations in support of my argument may be found in Robertson, Ross M., History of the American Economy (2d. ed.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), pp. 573–76, passimGoogle Scholar; Levy, Lester S. and Sampson, Roy J., American Economic Development (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1962), p. 324Google Scholar; Clewett, Richard C., “Mass Marketing of Consumer Goods,” in Williamson, Harold F., ed., The Growth of the American Economy (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951), pp. 776–77;Google ScholarSoule, George, Economic Forces in American History (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1952), p. 248. See, for exampleGoogle Scholar, Jones, Peter D'A, Americas Wealth (New York: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 275-77, passimGoogle Scholar; Soule, George, Prosperity Decade (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1947), p. 148Google Scholar; Bining, Arthur C. and Cochran, Thomas C., The Rise of American Economic Life (4th rev. ed.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), p. 550Google Scholar; Russell, Robert, A History of the American Economic System (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964), p. 490; andGoogle ScholarSoule, George and Carosso, Vincent, American Economic History (New York: The Dryden Press, 1957), p. 388Google Scholar.

3 Oshima, Harry, “Consumer Asset Formation and the Future of Capitalism,” Economic Journal, LXXI (03. 1961), pp. 20–35. See also my analysis, withCrossRefGoogle ScholarThompson, Robert, “Consumer Asset Formation and Economic Growth—The United States Case”, Economic Journal, LXXII (05 1966), pp. 312–27Google Scholar.

4 Rostow, W. W., Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, [Eng.]: The University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

5 For example, ibid., pp. 80, 83.

6 For example, ibid., pp. 76, 77, 82.

7 Ibid., p. 80.

8 Ibid., pp. 83, 154.

9 No attempt is made here to rework available time series for coverage, adequacy of price deflators, quality change, etc.

10 I believe I tended to err in such a direction in a discussion of the Oshima thesis in the Economic Journal for June 1966. This was suggested to me by F. Thomas Juster and Robert E. Lipsey, a criticism for which I am much indebted to them.

11 Neither are consumer durables of rising significance relative to GNP. They do rise very moderately relative to NNP by virtue of the increasing relative importance of business capital consumption allowances, and to disposable income because of a slight rise in the ratio of aggregate consumption to disposable income.

12 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Consumer Instalment Credit, Part I. Vol. I, “Growth and Import” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1957), p. 9. This report will hereafter be referred to as “FRB Instalment Credit Report.” Reference to the automobile component of consumer spending will be made laterGoogle Scholar.

13 Stigler, George, The Theory of Trice (rev. ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 63Google Scholar.

14 This aspect has been stressed in the research on diffusion of new products conducted by Dorothy S. Brady and F. Gerard Adams.

15 Kuznets, Simon, “The Share and Structure of Consumption,” in “Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. X, Part II (01. 1962), pp. 52–54Google Scholar.

16 Then too, there is more to elasticity than income, as suggested by Brady's and Adams' “diffusion process.” In particular, there is most probably the equivalent of a “capital stock adjustment process.” J. S. Cramer, for example, found that by adding a net worth elasticity coefficient to a short-term income elasticity coefficient he about doubled his result for the long-term income elasticity of refrigerators. The Ownership of Major Consumer Durables (Cambridge, [Eng.]: The University Press, 1962), pp. 73–74.Google ScholarCf. also his “Owner Elasticities of Durable Consumer Goods,” Review of Economic Studies, XXV (02. 1958), pp. 87–96Google Scholar.

17 For the suggested rise in auto product since 1929, see U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Survey of Current Business (July 1964) and Economic Report of the President (Jan. 1965), p. 201. For indication of how shifts in the relative importance of durables ot consumers may sharply affect their comparative growth rates (in terms of stock growth, post-World War II), see Goldsmith, Raymond, The National Wealth of the United States in the Postwar Period, National Bureau of Economic Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 58Google Scholar.

18 Gallman, Robert, “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834–1909,” in Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Studies in Income and Wealth, Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States After 1800, National Bureau of Economic Research (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 18, Table 5. In a letter to this writer, Professor Gallman comments that the allocation of certain durables, e.g., carriages and wagons, between consumers and producers, is subject to substantial error. He also notes that the rapid growth of his consumer durables series reflects to an uncertain degree the displacement of home and hand trade production by factory production, e.g., household furnitureGoogle Scholar.

19 See Brady, Dorothy S., “Relative Prices in the Nineteenth Century,” THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, XXIV (05 1964), pp. 175–88, passimGoogle Scholar.

20 Outside the central city “a lively second-hand market for buggies developed” about the time of the Civil War.

21 Historical Statistics of the United States (1960), p. 152, Series F, pp. 222–46Google Scholar.

22 In th e view of the writers of the “FRB Instalment Credit Report,” “the transformation in the economic behavior of urban consumers over the past 50 years can be described in terms of increasing consumer ownership of physical assets … In the past, the assets were owned, to a great extent, by business establishments and consumers purchased the services. Increasingly, American families have tended to purchase durable assets and thus obtain their services directly.” (pp. 9–10).

23 , Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth, p. 136. This statement is also addressed to much wide-rangin g phraseology by economic historians about the spread of the automobileGoogle Scholar.

24 The “FRB Instalment Credit Report” is clearly committed to this position (cf. its pp. 9, 10, 11, 167–71, passim).

25 Calculated from Kuznets, S., Capital in the American Economy, National Bureau of Economic Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 533, Table R-19Google Scholar.

26 Calculated from , Goldsmith, National Wealth of the U.S., p. 42Google Scholar.

27 Of course, land has fallen drastically as a proportion of consumer wealth and in the stock-flow relationships.

28 I am indebted to Professor Walter A. Weisskopf of Roosevelt University for this suggestion.

29 Historical Statistics (1960), p. 152Google Scholar; and Goldsmith, Raymond, Brady, Dorothy, and Mendershausen, Horst, A Study in Saving in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), III, 20Google Scholar.