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The rise in personal bankruptcies: the Eighth Federal Reserve District and beyond

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  • Thomas A. Garrett

Abstract

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.

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  • Thomas A. Garrett, 2007. "The rise in personal bankruptcies: the Eighth Federal Reserve District and beyond," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Jan), pages 15-38.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2007:i:jan:p:15-38:n:v.89no.1
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    Cited by:

    1. Rajeev Darolia & Dubravka Ritter, 2020. "Strategic Default Among Private Student Loan Debtors: Evidence from Bankruptcy Reform," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 487-517, Summer.
    2. Garrett, Thomas A. & Wall, Howard J., 2014. "Personal-Bankruptcy Cycles," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(7), pages 1488-1507, October.
    3. Vadim Kufenko & Niels Geiger, 2016. "Business cycles in the economy and in economics: an econometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(1), pages 43-69, April.
    4. Giesecke, Kay & Longstaff, Francis A. & Schaefer, Stephen & Strebulaev, Ilya, 2011. "Corporate bond default risk: A 150-year perspective," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 233-250.
    5. Chintal Desai & Andre Mollick, 2014. "On Consumer Credit Outcomes in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 91-115, February.
    6. Wenli Li & Tashiro Ryotaro & Solomon H. Tarlin, 2020. "Bankruptcy Filings in the Third District During COVID-19," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 5(3), pages 15-22, September.

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