Debt Relief and Debtor Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Consumer Bankruptcy Protection / Will Dobbie, Jae Song.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dobbie, Will.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Song, Jae.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20520.

NBER working paper series no. w20520

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Debt Relief and Debtor Outcomes

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

Consumer bankruptcy is one of the largest social insurance programs in the United States, but little is known about its impact on debtors. We use 500,000 bankruptcy filings matched to administrative tax and foreclosure data to estimate the impact of Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on subsequent outcomes. Exploiting the random assignment of bankruptcy filings to judges, we find that Chapter 13 protection increases annual earnings by $5,562, decreases five-year mortality by 1.2 percentage points, and decreases five-year foreclosure rates by 19.1 percentage points. These results come primarily from the deterioration of outcomes among dismissed filers, not gains by granted filers.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2014.