TY - BOOK ID - 85645120 TI - Consumer lending in France and America : credit and welfare PY - 2014 SN - 113989840X 1139904345 1139059041 1107015650 110769390X PB - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Consumer credit KW - Bank loans KW - Public welfare KW - POLITICAL SCIENCE / Economic Conditions. KW - Finance KW - Business & Economics KW - Credit, Debt & Loans KW - Bank credit KW - Loans KW - Consumer debt KW - Credit UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:85645120 AB - Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by the late twentieth century come to believe that more credit would make even poor families better off? This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France. If Americans were profligate in their borrowing, the French were correspondingly frugal. Comparison of the two countries reveals that America's love affair with credit was not primarily the consequence of its culture of consumption, as many writers have observed, nor directly a consequences of its less generous welfare state. It emerged instead from evolving coalitions between fledgling consumer lenders seeking to make their business socially acceptable and a range of non-governmental groups working to promote public welfare, labor, and minority rights. In France, where a similar coalition did not emerge, consumer credit continued to be perceived as economically regressive and socially risky. ER -