US consumers may turn to the private market for credit when income and government benefits fall short. The most vulnerable consumers have access only to the highest-cost loans. Prior research on trade-offs of credit with government welfare support cannot distinguish between distinct forms of unsecured credit due to data limitations. Here we provide insight on credit–welfare state trade-offs vis-à-vis unemployment insurance generosity by leveraging a large sample of credit data that allow us to separate credit cards, personal loans and alternative financial services loans and to analyse heterogeneity in credit use by household income. We find that more generous state unemployment insurance benefits were associated with a lower probability of high-cost credit use during the first seven quarters of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This inverse association was concentrated among consumers living in low-income households. Our results support theories that public benefits are inversely associated with the use of costly credit.

当收入和政府福利不足时，美国消费者可能会转向私人市场寻求信贷。最脆弱的消费者只能获得成本最高的贷款。由于数据限制，先前关于信贷与政府福利支持权衡的研究无法区分不同形式的无担保信贷。在这里，我们利用大量信用数据样本，提供有关信用与福利国家与失业保险慷慨权衡的见解，这些数据使我们能够区分信用卡、个人贷款和替代金融服务贷款，并分析信用使用的异质性按家庭收入。我们发现，在 2019 年冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 大流行的前七个季度，更慷慨的州失业保险福利与高成本信贷使用的可能性较低有关。这种负关联主要集中在低收入家庭的消费者中。我们的结果支持这样的理论：公共利益与昂贵信贷的使用成反比。