The impact of unsecured debt on financial distress among British households

Ana Del-Rí­o and Garry Young
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ana Del Rio

Bank of England working papers from Bank of England

Abstract: This paper uses evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to examine how attitudes towards unsecured debt are related to household finances and other characteristics. An ordered-logit model is estimated for 1995 and 2000 using a self-reported indicator of financial distress as the dependent variable. This analysis suggests that the main factors causing debt problems are the unsecured debt-income ratio, the level of mortgage income gearing, the level of financial wealth of households, their health, ethnicity and marital status. While the proportion of households reporting debt problems did not change between 1995 and 2000, there were important shifts among different groups. In particular, more households in the youngest age group reported debt repayments were a heavy burden in 2000, while the opposite applies to the oldest age group where a smaller proportion of households than in 1995 reported debt was a heavy burden. These changes can largely be accounted for by the changing economic circumstances of these groups rather than an unrelated shift in attitudes. In particular, the increase in indebtedness of the young was the main factor accounting for their greater tendency to report debt problems.

Date: 2005-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn and nep-dcm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2005/WP262.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2005/WP262.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2005/WP262.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The impact of unsecured debt on financial distress among British households (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boe:boeewp:262

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bank of England working papers from Bank of England Bank of England, Threadneedle Street, London, EC2R 8AH. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Media Team ().