Search Results
Report
The impact of housing markets on consumer debt: credit report evidence from 1999 to 2012
We investigate the impact of large swings in the housing market on nonmortgage borrowing, including student, credit card, auto, and home equity debts. For this purpose, we use CoreLogic geographic house price variation, matched with rich data on consumer liabilities from the Equifax-sourced FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel. The length and timing of our panel allow us to study the consumer debt portfolio response to house price changes during a boom-and-bust cycle of historic magnitude as well as during more ordinary times. In first-differenced instrumental variables estimation, we find that during ...
Journal Article
The financial crisis at the kitchen table: trends in household debt and credit
Since the onset of the financial crisis, households have reduced their outstanding debt by about $1.3 trillion. While part of this reduction stemmed from a historic increase in consumer defaults and lender charge-offs, particularly on mortgage debt, other factors were also at play. An analysis of the New York Fed?s Consumer Credit Panel?a rich new data set on individual credit accounts?reveals that households actively reduced their obligations during this period by paying down their current debts and reducing new borrowing. These household choices, along with banks? stricter lending ...
Discussion Paper
Household Formation within the “Boomerang Generation”
Young Americans? living arrangements have changed strikingly over the past fifteen years, with recent cohorts entering the housing market at much lower rates and lingering much longer in their parents? households. The New York Times Magazine reported this past summer on the surge in college-educated young people who ?boomerang? back to living with their parents after graduation. Joining that trend are the many other members of this cohort who have never left home, whether or not they attend college. Why might young people increasingly reside with their parents? They may be unable to find ...
Report
Do informal referrals lead to better matches? Evidence from a firm's employee referral system
The limited nature of data on employment referrals in large business and household surveys has so far limited our understanding of the relationships among employment referrals, match quality, wage trajectories, and turnover. Using a new, firm-level data set that includes explicit information on whether a worker was referred by a current employee of the company, we are able to provide rich detail on these empirical relationships for a single U.S. corporation, and to test various predictions of theoretical models of labor market referrals. Predictions with which our results align include: 1) ...
Discussion Paper
Just Released: Student Loan Delinquency Rate Defies Overall Downward Trend in Household Debt and Credit Report for Fourth Quarter 2014
Today, the New York Fed released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2014. The report is based on data from the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel, a nationally representative sample drawn from anonymized Equifax credit data. Overall, aggregate balances increased by $117 billion, or 1.0 percent, boosted by increases in all credit types except home equity lines of credit.
Discussion Paper
Have Consumers Been Deleveraging?
Since its peak in summer 2008, U.S. consumers’ indebtedness has fallen by more than a trillion dollars. Over roughly the same period, charge-offs—the removal of obligations from consumers’ credit reports because of defaults—have risen sharply, especially on loans secured by houses, which make up about 80 percent of consumer liabilities. An important question for gauging the behavior of U.S. consumers is how to interpret these two trends. Is the reduction in debts entirely attributable to defaults, or are consumers actively reducing their debts? In this post, we demonstrate that a ...
Report
Financial education and the debt behavior of the young
Young Americans are heavily reliant on debt and have clear financial literacy shortcomings, yet evidence on the relationship between financial education and youths? subsequent debt behavior remains both limited and mixed. In this paper, we study the effects of exposure to financial training on debt outcomes in early adulthood among a large and representative sample of young Americans. Variation in exposure to financial training comes from statewide changes in high school graduation requirements regarding financial literacy, economics, and mathematics that were mandated in the late 1990s and ...
Discussion Paper
The Graying of American Debt
The U.S. population is aging and so are its debts. In this post, we use the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel, which is based on Equifax credit data, to look at how debt is changing as baby boomers reach retirement age and millennials find their footing. We find that aggregate debt balances held by younger borrowers have declined modestly from 2003 to 2015, with a debt portfolio reallocation away from credit card, auto, and mortgage debt, toward student debt. Debt held by borrowers between the ages of 50 and 80, however, increased by roughly 60 percent over the same time period. This ...
Discussion Paper
How Much Student Debt is Out There?
As is widely known, student loan debt has expanded significantly over the past decade or so and stands at historically high levels. But how much in total do students owe?