Consumption, Savings and Windfall Gains

In this paper, windfall gains are represented by "other money receipts," that is receipts other than those classed as money income. These are defined as "inheritances and occasional large gifts of money from persons outside the family . . . and net receipts from the settlement of fire and accident policies"; they include the soldiers' bonus. Some of these receipts may have been anticipated. However, there seems no reason to suppose that the degree of unexpectedness was greater for other money receipts, in toto, than for the soldiers' bonus. The observations examined are averages, for a set of places (to be defined shortly), for consumer units whose heads were wage or salary workers.