New York - The last few months have produced some more cheerful economic news, with strong corporate profits, modest increases in consumer confidence and rising stock market indices. However a new Harris Poll finds no change in the steps that people are taking to save money and reduce their spending. Many people continue to economize, and there is no evidence of consumers' spending behavior being more relaxed. The recession ended many months ago, but the psychological impact of the financial and housing crisis is still very strong.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 3,171 adults surveyed online between February 14 and 21, 2011 by Harris Interactive.

This is the sixth Harris Poll since 2009 to ask about twelve steps that some consumers are taking to save money and avoid spending too much. The last time these questions were asked was in October last year and the results in this new survey are virtually identical to those from six months ago. For example almost the same proportions of adults report that they are purchasing more generic brands (61% now, 62% last October), brown bagging their lunches (45%, 45%), going to a hairdresser or barber less often (38%, 37%), switching to refillable water bottles (35%, 37%), and all of the other purchasing behaviors in the list. Many of the numbers are identical and none of the differences are significantly significant.

The survey does find substantial differences, however, between the behaviors of people over 65 and all the younger generations. Matures are less likely to be going to a hairdresser or barber less often (32% compared to 38% to 41% for Baby Boomers (aged 47-65), Gen Xers (aged 35-46), and Echo Boomers (aged 18-34)), to have cancelled or cut back cable TV (13% vs. 18% to 26% of other generational groups), cancelled landline phone services (4% vs. 13% to 24%), or cut cell phone services (6% vs. 12% to 19%). Also they are much less likely to be brown bagging at lunch time, or car pooling, but this reflects that many of them may not be working.

So What?

The last 12 months have shown that the economy can grow modestly without a substantial increase in consumer spending. However it is very unlikely that the rate of increase in GDP will get much faster until consumers feel more confident and open their wallets again. The evidence here suggests that economic growth will continue to be sluggish over the next few months.

Methodology

This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between February 14 to 21, 2011 among 3,171 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.