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Working Paper
Household Financial Decision-Making After Natural Disasters: Evidence from Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey brought more than four feet of rainfall to the Houston area in August 2017, leading to substantial flooding in many areas. Using regulatory data with detailed information on borrowing terms, we compare the borrowing response to Hurricane Harvey in parts of Houston that were more and less affected by flooding. We find that hurricane-affected households borrowed in a price-sensitive and time-limited manner, relying almost exclusively on promotional-rate credit cards and mortgage forbearance for new credit and repaying balances quickly. We find that conditional on flooding, ...
Briefing
The Living Arrangements of Older Households
n the past century, the share of the U.S. population aged 65 or older has more than tripled, rising from 4.7 percent in 1920 to 16.8 percent in 2020.1 This trend has been driven by both longer life expectancies and declining birth rates. In addition to having profound consequences for labor markets and government finances, an aging population will likely have substantial effects on housing markets. In this article, we document how the living arrangements of older households (those 65 or older) have changed over the past 50 years and discuss some of their potential implications.