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   https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20221167  

   Coibion, Olivier; Georgarakos, Dimitris; Gorodnichenko, Yuriy; Kenny, Geoff; Weber, Michael (March 2024, American Economic Review)

   We use randomized treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of future economic growth to generate exogenous changes in the perceived macroeconomic uncertainty of treated households. The effects on their spending decisions relative to an untreated control group are measured in follow-up surveys. Our results indicate that, after taking into account first moments, higher macroeconomic uncertainty induces households to significantly and persistently reduce their total monthly spending in subsequent months. Changes in spending are broad based across spending categories and apply to larger durable good purchases as well. (JEL D12, D81, D84, E21, E23, G51) 

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2. The persistence of household energy insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac90d7  

   Konisky, David M.; Carley, Sanya; Graff, Michelle; Memmott, Trevor (September 2022, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract This study analyzes household energy insecurity in the United States during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous research is limited by mostly cross-sectional research designs that do not allow scholars to study the persistency of this specific type of material hardship. We fill this gap by analyzing data from an original, nationally-representative, panel survey of low-income households. We find high levels of energy insecurity during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the initial months when the economic dislocation was at its height, and that many low-income households experienced it on multiple occasions during this period. We also identify disparities: households with people of color, very low-income, children aged five years and younger, with someone who relies on an electronic medical device, and those living in deficient housing conditions were more likely to experience energy insecurity. Households with these characteristics were also more likely to suffer from energy insecurity on a persistent basis through the first year of the pandemic. 

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3. The Influence of Household Refrigerator Ownership on Diets in Vietnam

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100930  

   Heard, Brent R.; Thi, Huong Trinh; Burra, Dharani Dhar; Heller, Martin C.; Miller, Shelie A.; Duong, Thanh Thi; Simioni, Michel; Jones, Andrew D. (December 2020, Economics & Human Biology)

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4. Surplus Household production in the Classic Maya economy

   McKillop, Heather (April 2022, Seven Millennia of Salt making)

   Plata, Alberto (Ed.)

   Survey and excavation of wooden buildings and associated briquetage at the Paynes Creek Salt Works indicate salt was produced by households in salt kitchens at sites that were submerged by sealevel rise. The sites are underwater in a salt-water lagoon system on the southern coast of Belize, Central America. The wood was preserved in red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) peat that provided an anaerobic matrix for building posts that were driven into the ground when the pole and thatch salt kitchens were built. Brine was increased in salinity by pouring it over salty soil in canoes, as evidenced by piles of discarded soil at the only two sites above water in the mangroves, as well as a wooden canoe. The brine was boiled in pots over fires in the salt kitchens. Salt cakes and salted fish were transported by canoe up nearby rivers to inland communities where salt was scarce. As salt cakes, they became commodities that could be stored, traded, or kept for subsequent transactions, as currency equivalencies. The implications for salt production in the Maya area during the Classic period civilization (A.D. 300-900) are discussed with reference to other salt works lacking wooden buildings. 

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5. Housewives and maids: The labor of household recycling in urban India

   https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620914219  

   Luthra, Aman (March 2020, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space)

   Sorting waste at-source (or household recycling) helps optimize the efficiency of waste management systems and safeguard the health of waste handlers. Recently, segregation of waste has become an urgent policy imperative that has been written into national waste management policies in India. While urban Indian households have had a long-standing tradition of segregating and selling high-value recyclables to actors in the informal sector, in contemporary policy discourse, women are constructed as recalcitrant urban subjects who need to be disciplined in accordance with the new mandates of waste segregation. This paper locates these processes of subject formation within the changing political economy of waste. Waste sorting is a labor-intensive process, and certain waste management technologies require presorted materials. In addition, presorted recyclables also offer up a source of revenue for waste management service providers. Beyond seeing the need for source segregation simply in abstract environmental and public health interests, this paper argues for contextualizing this imperative within the ongoing processes of privatization and mechanization of waste management systems. These processes dispossess informal waste collectors from their means of subsistence while relying on the unpaid labor of certain women, thus reproducing gender, class, and caste relations. 

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