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Discussion Paper
Uneven Distribution of Household Debt by Gender, Race, and Education
Household debt has risen markedly since 2013 and amounts to more than $15 trillion dollars. While the aggregate volume of household debt has been well-documented, literature on the gender, racial and education distribution of debt is lacking, largely because of an absence of adequate data that combine debt, demographic, and education information. In a three-part series beginning with this post, we seek to bridge this gap. In this first post, we focus on differences in debt holding behavior across race and gender. Specifically, we explore gender and racial disparities in different types of ...
Working Paper
The Persistence of Financial Distress.
Using recently available proprietary panel data, we show that while many (35%) US consumers experience fi nancial distress at some point in the life cycle, most of the events of nancial distress are primarily concentrated in a much smaller proportion of consumers in persistent trouble. Roughly 10% of consumers are distressed for more than a quarter of the life cycle, and less than 10% of borrowers account for half of all distress events. These facts can be largely accounted for in a straightforward extension of a workhorse model of defaultable debt that accommodates a simple form of ...
Journal Article
Consumer Debt Is High, but Consumers Seem to Have Room to Run
Real consumer debt is now higher than its prior peak during the global financial crisis, driven in part by increases in credit card debt. Although the share of credit card debt transitioning into delinquency has risen, it remains below levels seen during the global financial crisis. Moreover, debt-to-income measures remain historically low, suggesting that consumers in aggregate may have more room to run up debt before experiencing further financial stress.
Journal Article
Deja Vu? The Recent Rise in Credit Card Debt Delinquencies
An analysis examines how a recent rise in credit card debt delinquencies compares with a similar trend during the global financial crisis of 2007-09.
Credit Card Deleveraging during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The patterns of debt creation and debt destruction during the pandemic are different from those during the Great Recession.
Newsletter
Credit Cards: The Trillion-Dollar Debt
With record-level credit card debt in the headlines, this December 2023 issue of Focus on Finance addresses credit card history, statistics, and usage, as well as reasons for the increase in credit card debt. The information in the article can help in managing credit card accounts, and students will better understand the economics of using revolving credit as they prepare to become cardholders!
Working Paper
The Effects of Macroeconomic Shocks: Household Financial Distress Matters
When a macroeconomic shock arrives, variation in household balance-sheet health (captured by the presence of financial distress "FD"), leads to differential access to credit, and hence a distribution of consumption responses. As we document, though, over the past two recessions, households in prior FD also experienced macroeconomic shocks more intensely than others, leading to a distribution of shock severity. Thus, quantifying the importance of both dimensions of heterogeneity (FD or shock-severity) for consumption requires a structural model. We find that heterogeneity in FD matters more ...
Working Paper
Credit card debt and consumer payment choice: what can we learn from credit bureau data?
We estimate a two-stage Heckman selection model of credit card adoption and use with a unique dataset that combines administrative data from the Equifax credit bureau and self-reported data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, a representative survey of US consumers. Even though the survey data from the borrowers vary somewhat from the data provided by the lenders, the results based on the merged data are qualitatively similar to those based exclusively on self-reported surveys. This finding suggests that if administrative data are not available, it might be sufficient to use survey ...
Working Paper
The Persistence of Financial Distress
Using recently available proprietary panel data, we show that while many (35%) US consumers experience financial distress at some point in the life cycle, most of the events of financial distress are primarily concentrated in a much smaller proportion of consumers in persistent trouble. Roughly 10% of consumers are distressed for more than a quarter of the life cycle, and less than 10% of borrowers account for half of all distress events. These facts can be largely accounted for in a straightforward extension of a workhorse model of defaultable debt that accommodates a simple form of ...
Working Paper
Credit Card Debt Puzzle: Liquid Assets to Pay Bills
Using transaction data from a US consumer payments diary, we revisit the credit card debt puzzle—a scenario in which consumers revolve credit card debt while also keeping liquid assets as bank account deposits. This scenario is very common: 42 percent of consumers in our sample were borrower-savers in 2019 (those who carry $100 or more in credit card debt and $100 or more in liquid assets). We explain the puzzle by showing that consumers need their liquid assets to pay monthly bills and other necessary expenses, including mortgage or rent. More than 80 percent of bills by value were paid ...