Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Reducing debt improves psychological functioning and changes decision-making in the poor.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Scalp Event-Related Potentials: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Trial
- Revisiting evidence for an attentional tunneling effect caused by scarcity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Present-Biased Preferences Associated with Socioeconomic Status in Intertemporal Decision-Making: Evidence from Behavioral and Electroencephalographic Measures.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- From financial scarcity to risk and time preferences: the role of executive functions.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The role of financial scarcity in the relationship between income and health behaviors: a causal mediation analysis.BMC public health · 2025Article
- 20-Year income volatility and cognitive function in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) cohort: A replication and extension of CARDIA findings.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Mental Bandwidth is Associated with HIV and Viral Suppression Among Low-Income Women in Philadelphia.AIDS and behavior · 2025Article
- Unpacking the role of financial literacy in the debt-mental health nexus: evidence from China.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Neurocognitive function and medical care utilization in Veterans treated for substance use disorder.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2024Article
- Multiple group membership and executive function in a socioeconomically diverse sample.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Tunneling, cognitive load and time orientation and their relations with dietary behavior of people experiencing financial scarcity - an AI-assisted scoping review elaborating on scarcity theory.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Article
- Exposure to worrisome topics can increase cognitive performance when incentivized by a performance goal.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Perceived financial well-being and its association with frontostriatal functional connectivity, real-life anticipatory experiences, and everyday happiness.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Black/white differences in the relationship between debt and risk of heart attack across cohorts.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- Exploring the Relationship between Debt and Health after Incarceration: a Survey Study.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2023Article
- Consequences of scarcity: the impact of perceived scarcity on executive functioning and its neural basis.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Decision-making styles during stressful scenarios: The role of anxiety in COVID-19 pandemic.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Financial concern reduces child directed speech in a socioeconomically diverse sample.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- A guaranteed immediate payout reduces impatience of financially constrained individuals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We examine how chronic debt affects behavior by studying how a large, unanticipated debt-relief program affected psychological functioning and economic decision-making in beneficiaries. A charity granted low-income households debt relief worth up to Singapore dollars 5,000 (∼3 month's household income). We exploited quasiexperimental variation in the structure of debt relief: For the same dollar amount of relief, some beneficiaries had more debt accounts eliminated, while others had fewer paid off. Comparing 196 beneficiaries before and after debt relief, and controlling for debt-relief amount, having an additional debt account paid off improves cognitive functioning by about one-quarter of a SD and reduces the likelihood of exhibiting anxiety by 11% and of present bias by 10%. To achieve the same effect on cognitive functioning of eliminating one debt account, a beneficiary must receive debt relief worth ∼1 month's household income. There is no effect of debt-relief magnitude on anxiety and decision-making. We exclude training and calendar effects, debt-causing behaviors, and liquidity constraints as explanations. Instead, these results support the hypothesis that chronic debt impairs behavior because the mental-accounting costs of owing distinct debt accounts consume mental bandwidth. Poverty-alleviation policies aimed at the indebted poor should consider addressing mental accounting and bandwidth taxes.
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