Inequality and Stratification Commons^™

Debt, Financial Distress, And Bankruptcy Over The Life Course, Allison L. Mann, Ronald J. Mann

Ronald Mann

This paper examines how the risks of debt, financial distress, and bankruptcy shift over the life course. Comparing parallel data from the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances and the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we analyze use of the bankruptcy process as a product of the distribution of unplanned events, the ability of households to use credit markets to limit the adverse effects of such events, and barriers in access to the bankruptcy system. Our findings suggest two things. One, bankrupt households generally come from the bottom quartiles of the population in assets and income and the top quartile in debt, …