A government shutdown has little effect on the financial status of federal government workers, even those living paycheck to paycheck, provided it doesn’t go on for an extended period of time, according to economists who studied the impact of the 2013 shutdown on federal workers.

Many Democrats said this week that a partial government shutdown would do financial harm to the hundreds of thousands of affected federal workers who won’t be paid until the shutdown ends. But economists found that workers have more flexibility to juggle bills than is commonly thought.