Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Have Differences In Credit Access Diminished In An Era Of Financial Market Deregulation?, Christian E. Weller

Christian Weller

Over the past few decades, financial markets became increasingly deregulated and household debt expanded, sometimes rapidly. It is thus possible that greater deregulation led to improved credit access for typically underserved groups, such as minorities and low-income families, relative to their counterparts. Credit access is measured here by loan denials, discouraged applications, and costs of credit. Based on data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey Consumer Finances and using multivariate tests, there is no clear trend, though, towards equalization of credit access from 1989 to 2004. Specifically, gaps in loan denials and discouraged applications only improved for Hispanics relative to Whites. …