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How Similar Are Credit Scores Across Generations?
With the rise in economic inequality in the United States in recent decades, there has been growing concern about whether there is a sufficient degree of equality of opportunity in our society. Policymakers and researchers alike often focus on studies of intergenerational mobility as a way of assessing opportunity. These studies typically analyze distinct aspects of socioeconomic status, such as income, education, occupational status, and health, and measure the association in these outcomes between parents and their adult children.1 If the association (level of similarity) is very high, then ...
Working Paper
Measuring Interest Rate Risk in the Life Insurance Sector: The U.S. and the U.K.
We use a two factor model of life insurer stock returns to measure interest rate risk at U.S. and U.K. insurers. Our estimates show that interest rate risk among U.S. life insurers increased as interest rates decreased to historically low levels in recent years. For life insurers in the U.K., in contrast, interest rate risk remained low during this time, roughly unchanged from what it was in the period prior to the financial crisis when long-term interest rates were in their usual historical ranges. We attribute these differences to the heavier use of products that combine guarantees with ...
Newsletter
Flooding and Finances: Hurricane Harvey’s Impact on Consumer Credit
This article examines consumers? borrowing behavior and debt levels in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. We find that high levels of flooding from Harvey were associated with modest increases in auto loan balances, but moderate decreases in mortgage balances. In general, the storm did not hurt consumers? credit access according to the limited measures we investigate. These results are influenced by a number of factors, including federal disaster assistance, insurance payouts, and creditors permitting temporary postponements in loan payments, with such delays not being reported to credit bureaus.
Working Paper
The Bronx Is Burning: Urban Disinvestment Effects of the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements
We study the unintended effects of Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) plans developed by 26 states in the 1960s to address insurance redlining in urban neighborhoods. FAIR plans’ problematic features included prohibitions on considering environmental hazards in underwriting, mandatory insurer participation that diluted underwriting incentives, and payouts exceeding market values in declining areas. Using a triple-difference design comparing pre/post-FAIR periods, neighborhoods with/without likely FAIR access, and participating/nonparticipating states, we find that FAIR ...
Journal Article
Housing recovery: how far have we come?
Four years into the economic recovery, housing markets have finally started to improve. While many indicators of activity indicate recent growth, comparing over time and across the United States suggests that many regional housing markets are looking better now only in comparison to where they were during the recession. The recovery in housing markets does appear to be gaining steam, but it remains a work in progress in many places.
Working Paper
The long-term employment impacts of gentrification in the 1990s
In the ongoing debate over the social benefi ts and costs of gentrification, one of the key questions left largely unaddressed by the empirical literature is the degree to which gentrification impacts local labor markets. This paper begins by exploring the nature of employment change in one archetypical gentrifying neighborhood?Chicago?s Wicker Park?to motivate the central hypothesis that gentrification is associated with industrial restructuring. Next, a detailed analysis is presented on the long-term employment changes in neighborhoods that have experienced gentrification during the 1990s ...
Working Paper
Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth Through Housing in the Postwar United States
We study the impacts of blockbusting, i.e. large-scale racial turnover of urban neighborhoods orchestrated by real estate professionals using aggressive and discriminatory practices. In a panel of census tracts across large cities in the postwar United States, we compare tracts subjected to blockbusting activity to similar neighboring tracts not subjected to blockbusting. We find that blockbusting caused substantially lower house values over the next few decades. To understand the mechanisms behind this effect, we analyze property-level data in one neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. We find ...
Working Paper
Household Finance after a Natural Disaster: The Case of Hurricane Katrina
Little is known about how affected residents are able to cope with the fi nancial shock of a natural disaster. We investigate the impact that flooding from a major US hurricane had on household finance. Spikes in credit card borrowing and overall delinquency rates for the most flooded residents are modest in size and short-lived. Greater flooding results in larger reductions in total debt. Lower debt levels appear to be driven by homeowners using flood insurance to repay their mortgages rather than to rebuild. Debt reductions are larger in census tracts where mortgages were likely to be ...
Working Paper
Credit When You Need It
We estimate the causal effect of emergency credit on households’ finances after a negative shock. To do so, we link application data from the U.S. Federal Disaster Loan program, which provides loans to households that have uninsured damages from a federally-declared natural disaster, to a panel of credit records before and after the shock. We exploit a discontinuity in the loan approval rules that led applicants with debt-to-income ratios below 40% to be differentially likely to be approved. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences research design, we find that credit provision at ...
Journal Article
What Explains the Decline in Life Insurance Ownership?
Life insurance ownership has declined markedly over the past 30 years, continuing a trend that began as early as 1960. In 1989, 77 percent of households owned life insurance (see figure 1). By 2013, that share had fallen to 60 percent. This article analyzes factors that might have contributed to the decline in life insurance ownership from 1989 to 2013. The focus of our analysis is on two broad sources of potential change in the demand for life insurance: changes in the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the population and changes in how those same characteristics are associated ...