UC San Diego

Since Veblen's seminal work on "conspicuous consumption," a major academic tradition has connected household wealth loss to status-driven overspending. Using Consumer Expenditure Survey data from 2004-2009, this dissertation explores consumption patterns of American households to assess determinants of wealth loss. Of particular interest is the conformity of observed patterns with the expectations of status-spending theories and other theories of wealth loss and overspending. Findings from a series of logistic and OLS regression models indicate that disadvantaged circumstances (e.g. job loss, extreme medical costs, poverty) have considerably more explanatory power than status spending. I conclude that wealth loss is not primarily attributable to households' desire to overspend, in the contemporary American context