Household indebtedness did not weaken US monetary transmission post-crisis

There is little evidence on whether deteriorating household balance sheets in advanced economies have made monetary policy less effective since the Global Crisis. Using US household-level data, this column shows that the responsiveness of household consumption to monetary policy has in fact diminished since the crisis, and that households with the highest indebtedness responded the most to monetary policy shocks. Since the distribution of debt did not change after the crisis, this suggests that household debt did not contribute to lessening the effects of monetary policy over time.