KANSAS CITY, Mo. — 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 neighborhood pawnshop when they need cash or a loan.

An estimated 20% of the U.S. population has no bank account; more than half of this group don't have credit cards and can't get bank loans.

"These people are borrowing an average of $50," said John P. Caskey, assistant professor of economics at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa. "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."

In 1989, Caskey, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and Swarthmore student Brian Zikmund looked at the importance of pawnshops in the U.S. 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 bank 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're lending primarily to low-income people. In terms of the population they serve, the low-income, they're really important."

In 1988, about 6,900 pawnshops operated in the United States--one for every two commercial banks. Data suggests that these pawnshops made about 35 million loans, providing what Caskey and Zikmund estimate as 1% of the nation's consumer credit.

At year-end 1988, credit outstanding at pawnshops was about $689 million, compared to an estimated $371 billion at commercial banks and $87 billion at credit unions.

Although the amount loaned by all pawnshops is relatively small, Caskey and Zikmund assert that they have an important place in the consumer credit market when other measures are considered.