Dados Bibliográficos

Resumo

Sociological research on household debt has focused largely on young adults. Older adults, however, were also impacted by policy shifts encouraging borrowing. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data, we examine changes in indebtedness across three cohorts of older households ages 65 to 76. We estimate changes in debt through models of cohort differences in total debt and in housing, consumer, and educational debt. We find that debt has increased considerably across cohorts, especially for housing debt. We then evaluate potential explanations for this increase. We first examine how cohort differences in retirement, health insurance, and family dynamics may account for changes in indebtedness over time. We then use interaction models to determine how the association between these factors and indebtedness have changed over time. Surprisingly, our models provide no empirical evidence that these factors explain the increase in older adults' indebtedness over time.

Referências Citadas