Millions of Americans run to the bank or visit automated teller machines when they need cash. They use credit cards when they want to buy clothes, VCRs, or television sets.
But there is an underclass—people with low incomes and no credit history—who visit their neighbourhood pawnshops when they need cash or a loan.
An estimated 20 percent of the US population has no bank account, more than half of this group don't have credit cards and cannot get bank loans.
"These people are borrowing an average of ＄ 50," said John P. Caskey of Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. "If you add up in terms of how much dollar value pawnshops provide they don't look very important. If you add up how much of the population they serve or the number of loans they make, they are important."
Because they make loans, pawnshops are a type of bank, often calling themselves "the bank of the little people".
Caskey and Swarthmore student Brain Zikmund in 1989 looked at the importance of pawnshops in the US economy—the first serious study of the subject since the 1930s.
Their conclusion: pawnshops are the consumer's lender of last resort.
Pawnshop customers typically cannot get credit at mainstream financial institutions. They have poor credit records, excessive debt in relation to their incomes, low and unstable incomes, or cannot maintain positive hank account balances.
Typically, pawnshop customers borrow relatively small amounts that traditional lenders are unwilling or unable to provide on a secured basis.
"If you look at total consumer credit, the amounts provided by pawnshops remain small," Caskey said. "They are lending primarily to low-income people. In terms of the population they serve, they're really important."
In 1988, about 6. 900 pawnshops operated in the United Stales—one for every two banks. Data suggest these pawnshops made about 35 million loans, providing that Caskcy and Zimund estimate as 1 percent of the nation's consumer credit.
The best title for the passage would be ______.

A. Credit Cards for the Poor
Banks for the Poor
C. Pawnshops Versus Banks
D. Commercial Banks