Consumer Bankruptcy Project

Consumer Bankruptcy Project in the News

The main segment on the April 18, 2021, episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver focused on consumer bankruptcy. The segment referenced two of our articles relying on CBP data: Portraits of Bankruptcy Filers and Life in the Sweatbox.

LWT - Snips

Reporting on Graying of U.S. Bankruptcy: Fallout from Life in a Risk Society

Bankruptcy BoomsIn this article, we find more than a two-fold increase in the rate at which older Americans (age 65 and over) file for bankruptcy and an almost five-fold increase in the percentage of older persons in the U.S. bankruptcy system. Tara Siegel Bernard, a personal finance reporter for The New York Times, profiled our article in ‘Too Little Too Late’: Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans (August 5, 2018). This story was featured on the front page.

Following The New York Times piece’s publication, Professor Robert Lawless appeared on C-SPAN to discuss our article.

 

Professor Deborah Thorne detailed our findings on NPR’s All Things Considered, A Study Found Bankruptcy Soared Among Americans 65 and Over (August 6, 2018).

And Professor Pamela Foohey discussed our article with Indiana Public Media, Shrinking Social Net Leaves Seniors Vulnerable (December 7, 2018).

CBS News also aired segments on CBS This Morning and CBS Evening News highlighting our article

Also following The New York Times piece’s publication, a variety of international, national, and local media outlets reported on our article, including recently the Financial Times in a weekend long-read, The Boomers Going Bust: Why Elderly Bankruptcy is Rising in America (August 8, 2019). Other media coverage, in reverse chronological order:

Reporting on Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act  

The CBP survey asks debtors what contributed to their bankruptcy filings and provides debtors with several options, two of which are medical expenses and illness-related work loss. In this peer-reviewed piece, we report that two-thirds of debtors cite at least one of these two medical contributors—equivalent to about 530,000 “medical bankruptcies” per year. On February 16, 2020, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver aired a segment on Medicare for All which featured a discussion of our paper:

Our findings also were discussed in stories and columns by several media outlets: 

Reporting on Life in the Sweatbox

The time before a person files bankruptcy is sometimes called the financial “sweatbox.” In this article, we find that people are living longer in the sweatbox before filing bankruptcy than they have in the past. Professor Pamela Foohey spoke with Brian L. Frye, Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law, about this article on Ipse Dixit, a podcast on legal scholarship.