Bankruptcy Data

Savings Plans and Chapter 13

06/14/18

David Jones, Chief US Bankruptcy Judge of the Southern District of Texas, has just posted a nifty empirical study of the effects of savings plans on the success of Chapter 13 filings.

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People’s Pre-Bankruptcy Struggles -- New Paper from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project

02/20/18

The current Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP)’s co-investigators (myself, Slipster Bob Lawless, and past Slipsters Katie Porter & Debb Thorne) just posted to SSRN our new article (forthcoming in Notre Dame Law Review), Life in the Sweatbox.

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Churches Are Still Filing Bankruptcy

02/15/18

Not only are religious organizations still filing under chapter 11. As in prior years, they continue to file under chapter 11 in line with fluctuations in consumer bankruptcy filings. Find a couple graphs below to show this. But first, some background.

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Bankruptcy, Illness, and Injury: More Data

10/24/17

A while back, political scientist Mirya Holman and I wrote a book chapter making sense of existing (and dueling) studies of the relationship between medical problems and bankruptcy, and presenting new findings from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project on debtors who entered into paymen

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ProPublica: The Bankruptcy System Fails Black Americans

09/28/17

It's been a busy day, but before I sign off for the evening, I would be remiss not to flag Paul Kiel's outstanding piece that came out this morning, How the Bankruptcy System is Failing Black Americans. ProPublica and The Atlantic co-published the article. An extensive data analysis also accompanies the article.

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An Explanation for the Low Bankruptcy Rates: Debt

07/18/17

Yesterday, I noted the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate of 2.38 per 1,000 persons is at historic lows. The next question is always why. In this post, I am going to try to walk through an explanation in four graphs. The upshot is that consumer debt is low but rising. As I like to say, it takes years of study to come to the conclusion that people file bankruptcy because they are in debt.

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