5 posts on "Gizem Kosar"
May 27, 2026
Food Insecurity and Consumer Pessimism
Current discussions regarding a bifurcated U.S. economy highlight the increasing economic divide between lower- and higher-income Americans in spending and earnings growth and wealth accumulation. While many households are doing fine and economic activity overall has been expanding at a solid pace, large segments of the population are facing high levels of economic insecurity and financial strain, and consumer sentiment on the whole has dropped to low levels. In this post, we use newly collected data from the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) to update our 2020 analysis of disproportionate financial hardship experienced during the early pandemic and to investigate recent changes in food insecurity and broader economic strains. We then examine how food insecurity relates to the increase in consumer pessimism. We find a remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children. We document a contemporaneous increase in pessimism among the same groups, along with a sharp decline in job-finding expectations.
October 14, 2025
Consumption Sensitivity of Uncertain Households
Uncertainty is a key component of everyday economic decisions of consumers and, perhaps not surprisingly, it plays a central role in economic models. According to economic theory, forward-looking consumers rely on their expectations and perceived uncertainty when making economic decisions. Nevertheless, measuring the uncertainty that households actually perceive, and how it affects consumer behavior, is challenging. The probabilistic nature of the Survey of Consumer Expectations enables us to make progress on this subject and to construct household-specific time-varying uncertainty. In our recent Staff Report, we empirically show that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is increasing and concave in perceived uncertainty. This novel empirical evidence poses a challenge for the conventional consumption-savings model with incomplete markets.
August 19, 2024
An Update on the Reservation Wages in the SCE Labor Market Survey
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s July 2024 SCE Labor Market Survey shows a year-over-year increase in the average reservation wage—the lowest wage respondents would be willing to accept for a new job—to $81,147, but a decline from a series’ high of $81,822 in March 2024. In this post, we investigate how the recent dynamics of reservation wages differed across individuals and how reservation wages are related to individuals’ expectations about their future labor market movements.
May 9, 2024
The Post‑Pandemic Shift in Retirement Expectations in the U.S.
One of the most striking features of the labor market recovery following the pandemic recession has been the surge in quits from 2021 to mid-2023. This surge, often referred to as the Great Resignation, or the Great Reshuffle, was uncommonly large for an economic expansion. In this post, we call attention to a related labor market change that has not been previously highlighted—a persistent change in retirement expectations, with workers reporting much lower expectations of working full-time beyond ages 62 and 67. This decline is particularly notable for female workers and lower-income workers.
September 24, 2021
Have Consumers’ Long‑Run Inflation Expectations Become Un‑Anchored?
With the recent surge in inflation since the spring there has been an increase in consumers’ short-run (one-year ahead) and, to a lesser extent, medium-run (three-year ahead) inflation expectations (see Survey of Consumer Expectations). Although this rise in short- and medium-run inflation expectations is relevant for policymakers, it does not provide direct evidence about “un-anchoring” of long-run inflation expectations. Roughly speaking, inflation expectations are considered un-anchored when long-run inflation expectations change significantly in response to developments in inflation or other economic variables, and begin to move away from levels consistent with the central bank’s (implicit or explicit) inflation objective. In that case, actual inflation can become unmoored and risks drifting persistently away from the central bank’s objective. Well-anchored long-run inflation expectations therefore represent an important measure of the success of monetary policy. In this post, we look at the current anchoring of consumers’ long-run inflation expectations using novel data from the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). Our results suggest that in August 2021 consumers’ five-year ahead inflation expectations were as well anchored as they were two years ago, before the start of the pandemic.
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