SAN FRANCISCO – Consumers closed out 2011 with less anxiety about the economy than at any time since the recession officially began in December 2007.
MoneyAnxiety.com, which publishes a monthly Money Anxiety Index, said the level of consumer anxiety over their finances was 95.1 in its method of measurement, down from 99.5 at mid-year and part of a consistent improvement throughout 2011.
“The current level of consumer financial anxiety is still very high,” said Dan Geller, Ph.D., Trend Analyst at Money Anxiety Index. “Despite the improvement in the last six months, the Money Anxiety Index is still at the same level that it was during the recession of the early 1980s.”
The Money Anxiety Index (MAI) measures various economic indicators and factors associated with consumers’ level of financial worry and stress. MAI, which measured the level of financial anxiety for the past 50 years, fluctuated from a high of 136.0 during the early 1980s recession, and a low of 40.3 in the mid 1960s (January 1975 = 100). The Money Anxiety Index was developed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with a large sample size of monthly economic indicators ranging from 1959 to 2010.
