William L. Skimmyhorn

Much Ado about Nothing? New Evidence on the Effects of Payday Lending on Military Members

We evaluate the effect that payday loan access has on credit and labor market outcomes of individuals in the U.S. Army. Using the conditional random assignment of service members to different locations, we employ three identification strategies: cross-sectional variation in state policies, within-term variation in payday lending access, and a difference-in-difference analysis using the national Military Lending Act. We find few adverse effects of payday loan access on service members when using any of these methods, even when we examine dozens of subsamples that explore potential differential treatment effects.

Military Personal Finance Research

This chapter reviews the literature in the nascent field of military personal finance. The terms personal finance and household finance (as it is often referred to within the economics discipline) are used interchangeably. The beginning of the chapter briefly describes the demographic characteristics and income of military members as background for readers new to this area. A thorough review of existing research follows in three broad areas directly related to personal financial outcomes: (a) financial decisions, (b) military life, and (c) military programs and services. Given the potential for military service to affect financial outcomes and vice versa, these topics are complicated and much of the existing evidence is only descriptive. In concluding, the authors provide suggestions for future research that could identify causality in these relationships, lead to a better understanding of the military population, and increase understanding of personal financial challenges more broadly.