Gender, indebtedness and social reproduction: another politics of the subprime crisis

This article makes a modest attempt at linking household-level trends with macro-level trajectories in the United States. The aim of which is to reveal how social reproduction (or ‘home work’ which entails biological and labor reproduction, the transmitting of values, norms, skills and knowledge) is an important factor influencing household financial insecurity, especially in the wake of this crisis. Using descriptive exhibits from the Survey of Consumer Finances it sketches a household-level picture of debt and income levels for homeowners from 1992 to 2007 as well as basic indebtedness indicators to demonstrate the degree to which family structure (as a proxy for social reproduction), gender and race all effect the degree of financial insecurity experienced by households and their likelihood of withstanding even minor declines in income or social support. The first section outlines the different levels of analysis used to explain the recent financial crisis, and the related subprime mortgage boom. Section two provides an analysis of two-parent compared to single-parent households, single-mothers compared to single-fathers, and white, non-white and just black single-mothers. From these descriptive exhibits and comparison of debt indicators we consider, in the final section, how these trends link up to broader macro-level trajectories, namely the failure of ‘privatized Keynesianism’ as a system of political and economic governance.