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The Persistence of Financial Distress

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Abstract
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 heterogeneity in time preference but not otherwise.

Suggested Citation

  • Kartik B. Athreya & Jose Mustre-del-Rio & Juan M. Sanchez, 2017. "The Persistence of Financial Distress," Research Working Paper RWP 17-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedkrw:rwp17-15
    DOI: 10.18651/RWP2017-15
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    Cited by:

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    2. Kyle Dempsey & Felicia Ionescu, 2021. "Lending Standards and Borrowing Premia in Unsecured Credit Markets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-039, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Kartik B. Athreya & Ryan Mather & Jose Mustre-del-Rio & Juan M. Sanchez, 2019. "Consumption in the Great Recession: The Financial Distress Channel," Working Paper 19-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    4. French, Declan, 2023. "Exploring household financial strain dynamics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    5. Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Gajendran Raveendranathan, 2019. "Who Bears the Welfare Costs of Monopoly? The Case of the Credit Card Industry," Working Papers 2019-071, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    6. Mark Aguiar & Corina Boar & Mark Bils, 2019. "Who Are the Hand-to-Mouth?," 2019 Meeting Papers 525, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Mark Aguiar & Mark Bils & Corina Boar, 2020. "Who Are the Hand-to-Mouth?," Working Papers 2020-9, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    8. Kartik B. Athreya & Ryan Mather & Jose Mustre-del-Rio & Juan M. Sanchez, 2020. "Household Financial Distress and the Burden of 'Aggregate' Shocks," Working Paper 20-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    9. Christa N. Gibbs & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Donghoon Lee & Scott T. Nelson & Wilbert H. van der Klaauw & Jialan Wang, 2024. "Consumer Credit Reporting Data," NBER Working Papers 32791, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Roth, Paula, 2020. "Inequality, Relative Deprivation and Financial Distress: Evidence from Swedish Register Data," Working Paper Series 1374, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    11. Balloch, Adnan & Engels, Christian & Philip, Dennis, 2022. "When It Rains It Drains: Psychological Distress and Household Net Worth," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    12. Olga Gorbachev & María José Luengo-Prado, 2019. "The Credit Card Debt Puzzle: The Role of Preferences, Credit Access Risk, and Financial Literacy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 294-309, May.
    13. Kartik B. Athreya & Ryan Mather & Jose Mustre-del-Rio & Juan M. Sanchez, 2019. "The Effects of Macroeconomic Shocks: Household Financial Distress Matters," Working Papers 2019-025, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 11 Sep 2023.
    14. Kyle Dempsey & Felicia Ionescu, 2019. "Lending Standards and Consumption Insurance over the Business Cycle," 2019 Meeting Papers 1428, Society for Economic Dynamics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Default; financial distress; Consumer credit; credit card debt;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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