Search Results
Journal Article
Have the trends in housing bottomed out?
On a national level, the number of vacant homes is declining, as is the percentage of mortgages in serious delinquency. However, the demand for housing hasn't picked up, nor have prices.
Periodic Essay
Shifting fortunes: wealth trends in the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances
Short essays related to research on understanding and strengthening the balance sheets of American households.
Journal Article
Household financial stability: who suffered the most from the crisis?
The financial crisis and ensuing recession took a toll on just about everybody?s household wealth. Not surprisingly, the pain wasn?t evenly distributed. Those groups that are usually the most vulnerable in our society?young and middle-aged minority households?suffered the most, percentage-wise.
Journal Article
Flight to safety and U.S. Treasury securities
As in most crises, investors turned to Treasuries in droves over the past couple of years, even as yields declined.
Journal Article
Changes in the mortgage market since the crisis
It appears that mortgage origination and securitization is currently ?in limbo?: Private securitization has all but disappeared and is being absorbed by government- sponsored enterprises
Journal Article
Household Debt and the Great Recession
In the mid-2000s, household private debt reached a new level 1.2 times larger than personal income? before collapsing during the Great Recession. This paper uses microeconomic data to document the main changes in personal debt and explore the behavior of debt across generations over two periods: before and after the Great Recession. Special emphasis is placed on participation rates by category of debt (the extensive margin), volume borrowed (the intensive margin), and default behavior. Key findings include that between 1999 and 2013 the fraction of individuals with only unsecured (e.g., ...
Periodic Essay
The Demographics of Wealth - How Age, Education and Race Separate Thrivers from Strugglers in Today's Economy. Essay No. 3: Age, Birth Year and Wealth
Although there may be downsides to old age, those 62 and older can take heart in knowing that the odds are in favor of their being wealthier than younger people. And the gap has widened considerably over the past quarter-century?in favor of old people. That said, being old isn?t what it used to be. Baby boomers, who are now retiring in droves, are likely to be less well-off than their ?old? counterparts in the two previous generations. And it looks as if members of the next two generations ? Generation X and Generation Y (the millennials) ? might also end up less wealthy than the generation ...