The Two-Income Trap: Are Two-Earner Households More Financially Vulnerable?

Jonathan Fisher and Nathaniel Johnson

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We test whether two-earner married couples are more likely to file for consumer bankruptcy in the future than similar married couples. Since two-earner households are unable to adjust their income on the extensive margin, they are more vulnerable to income shocks, and thus at risk of bankruptcy in the future. We find that two-earner married couples in 1999 are more likely to file for bankruptcy from 2002-2004 compared to other married couples. Additionally, we present supporting information that suggests that two-earner households have a higher average propensity to consume.

Keywords: added worker; personal bankruptcy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 K3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 7 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2019/CES-WP-19-19.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:cen:wpaper:19-19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().