The Rise in Personal Bankruptcies

The Rise in Personal Bankruptcies PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Personal bankruptcy filings in the United States increased, per capita, nearly 350 percent between 1980 and 2005. This paper first addresses the changes in economic and institutional factors that have occurred over the past 100 years, many of which have occurred in the past 30 years, which are likely contributors to the dramatic rise in personal bankruptcy filings seen across the country. These factors include a reduction in personal savings, an increase in consumer debt, the proliferation of revolving credit, changes to bankruptcy law, and a reduced social stigma associated with filing for bankruptcy. Given the availability of bankruptcy data at various levels of aggregation, the remaining sections of the paper contain results from several different empirical analyses of bankruptcy filings using various data sets. Careful attention is paid to personal bankruptcy filings in counties located in Eighth Federal Reserve District states.

The Rise in Personal Bankruptcies

The Rise in Personal Bankruptcies PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Personal bankruptcy filings in the United States increased, per capita, nearly 350 percent between 1980 and 2005. This paper first addresses the changes in economic and institutional factors that have occurred over the past 100 years, many of which have occurred in the past 30 years, which are likely contributors to the dramatic rise in personal bankruptcy filings seen across the country. These factors include a reduction in personal savings, an increase in consumer debt, the proliferation of revolving credit, changes to bankruptcy law, and a reduced social stigma associated with filing for bankruptcy. Given the availability of bankruptcy data at various levels of aggregation, the remaining sections of the paper contain results from several different empirical analyses of bankruptcy filings using various data sets. Careful attention is paid to personal bankruptcy filings in counties located in Eighth Federal Reserve District states.

The Increase in Personal Bankruptcy and the Crisis in Consumer Credit

The Increase in Personal Bankruptcy and the Crisis in Consumer Credit PDF Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Accounting for the Rise in Consumer Bankruptcies

Accounting for the Rise in Consumer Bankruptcies PDF Author: Igor Livshits
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Personal bankruptcies in the United States have increased dramatically, rising from 1.4 per thousand working age population in 1970 to 8.5 in 2002. We use a heterogeneous agent life-cycle model with competitive financial intermediaries who can observe households' earnings, age and current asset holdings to evaluate several commonly offered explanations. We find that increased uncertainty (income shocks, expense uncertainty) cannot quantitatively account for the rise in bankruptcies. Instead, the rise in filings appears to mainly reflect changes in the credit market environment. We find that credit market innovations which cause a decrease in the transactions cost of lending and a decline in the cost of bankruptcy can largely accounting for the rise in consumer bankruptcy. We also argue that the abolition of usury laws and other legal changes are unimportant.

The Increase in Personal Bankruptcy and the Crisis in Consumer Credit

The Increase in Personal Bankruptcy and the Crisis in Consumer Credit PDF Author: Charles E. Grassley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780788180644
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Hearing on the explosive growth in personal bankruptcies & the crisis in consumer banking. Witnesses include: Michael E. Staten, Credit Research Center, Purdue Univ.; Ian Domowitz, Northwestern Univ.; Edward Bankole, Moody's Investors Service; Kim Kowalewski, Congressional Budget Office; Michael McEneney, for the National Consumer Bankruptcy Coalition; Donald B. Banks, dir. of legal services for Retailers National Bank, Dayton Hudson Corp.; Kenneth R. Crone, Visa USA, Inc.; Jean Ryan, attorney at law; & Gerald P. Wixted, Consumer Credit Counseling Services.

Debt's Dominion

Debt's Dominion PDF Author: David A. Skeel Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828503
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Bankruptcy in America, in stark contrast to its status in most other countries, typically signifies not a debtor's last gasp but an opportunity to catch one's breath and recoup. Why has the nation's legal system evolved to allow both corporate and individual debtors greater control over their fate than imaginable elsewhere? Masterfully probing the political dynamics behind this question, David Skeel here provides the first complete account of the remarkable journey American bankruptcy law has taken from its beginnings in 1800, when Congress lifted the country's first bankruptcy code right out of English law, to the present day. Skeel shows that the confluence of three forces that emerged over many years--an organized creditor lobby, pro-debtor ideological currents, and an increasingly powerful bankruptcy bar--explains the distinctive contours of American bankruptcy law. Their interplay, he argues in clear, inviting prose, has seen efforts to legislate bankruptcy become a compelling battle royale between bankers and lawyers--one in which the bankers recently seem to have gained the upper hand. Skeel demonstrates, for example, that a fiercely divided bankruptcy commission and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress have yielded the recent, ideologically charged battles over consumer bankruptcy. The uniqueness of American bankruptcy has often been noted, but it has never been explained. As different as twenty-first century America is from the horse-and-buggy era origins of our bankruptcy laws, Skeel shows that the same political factors continue to shape our unique response to financial distress.

Bankrupt in America

Bankrupt in America PDF Author: Mary Eschelbach Hansen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022667973X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In 2005, more than two million Americans—six out of every 1,000 people—filed for bankruptcy. Though personal bankruptcy rates have since stabilized, bankruptcy remains an important tool for the relief of financially distressed households. In Bankrupt in America, Mary and Brad Hansen offer a vital perspective on the history of bankruptcy in America, beginning with the first lasting federal bankruptcy law enacted in 1898. Interweaving careful legal history and rigorous economic analysis, Bankrupt in America is the first work to trace how bankruptcy was transformed from an intermittently used constitutional provision, to an indispensable tool for business, to a central element of the social safety net for ordinary Americans. To do this, the authors track federal bankruptcy law, as well as related state and federal laws, examining the interaction between changes in the laws and changes in how people in each state used the bankruptcy law. In this thorough investigation, Hansen and Hansen reach novel conclusions about the causes and consequences of bankruptcy, adding nuance to the discussion of the relationship between bankruptcy rates and economic performance.

As We Forgive Our Debtors

As We Forgive Our Debtors PDF Author: Teresa A. Sullivan
Publisher: Beard Books
ISBN: 9781893122154
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Bankruptcy in America is a booming business, with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans filing for bankruptcy each year. Is this dramatic growth a result of mushrooming debt or does it reflect a moral decline that permits the middle class to evade their debts? As We Forgive Our Debtors addresses these questions with hard empirical data drawn from bankruptcy court filings. The authors of this multidisciplinary study describe the law and the statistics in clear, nontechnical language, combining a thorough statistical description of the social and economic position of consumer bankrupts with human portraits of the debtors and creditors whose journeys have ended in bankruptcy court. Book jacket.

Personal Bankruptcy and the Health of Families and Children

Personal Bankruptcy and the Health of Families and Children PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Poor health, lack of insurance coverage, and medical debt may be key factors underlying the rise of personal bankruptcy in the United States. However, research on the connections between health and personal bankruptcy is limited. Moreover, research has yet to explore the relationship between family bankruptcy and the health and mental health of dependent children. The goal of this thesis is to address these gaps in our understanding of bankruptcy and scaffold future research and policy efforts. Chapter I provides background on bankruptcy in the US and introduces a theoretical context for the topic of bankruptcy emphasizing life course and social ecological frameworks. Chapter II describes the characteristics of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult Cohort (NLSCYA) which provided the data source for the analyses. Chapter III presents the results multiple logistic regression models which seek to identify if and to what extent health factors are associated with bankruptcy filings over a twenty-year period while considering an array of potentially relevant covariates. Chapter IV furthers the analysis through the use of Cox regression models to account for the time-dependent and dynamic nature of life events (e.g. unemployment, health changes, and familial shifts). Chapter V considers the relationships between family bankruptcy and children's health and mental health using multi-state Markov models to compare the intensity of transitions into (and out of) health and mental health states for children in bankrupt and non-bankrupt households. The results of these analyses indicate that several health factors (e.g. smoking, obesity, and depressive symptomology) are associated with an increased hazard of declaring bankruptcy while health insurance coverage is associated with a lower hazard of bankruptcy. Several sociodemographic characteristics are also associated with bankruptcy. Finally, the relative hazard of a child being indicated for an emotional or behavioral problem is 56% higher for children in a family where bankruptcy is declared (HR: 1.56; 95% CI: 1.10 - 2.19). In contrast, relative hazard of a family-level bankruptcy is 56% higher in families where a child is indicated as having an activity limitation (HR: 1.56; 95% CI: 1.06 - 2.29).

Personal Bankruptcy

Personal Bankruptcy PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Monopolies and Commercial Law
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bankruptcy
Languages : en
Pages : 1088

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One Million Personal Bankruptcies a Year

One Million Personal Bankruptcies a Year PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This report examines various explanations for the rapid rise in personal bankruptcy filings in the United States since 1980, the economic significance of the phenomenon, and policy options. This discussion and analysis provide a background for consideration of legislation before the 105th Congress ( H.R. 3150 and S. 1301), which proposes to reform the consumer bankruptcy process. For a more detailed analysis of these proposals, see CRS Report 98-276 A. This report, which does not assume extensive familiarity with bankruptcy law, will be updated as legislative developments warrant or as new economic data become available.