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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
Foreclosure Kids: Examining the Early Adult Credit Usage of Adolescents Affected by Foreclosure
We investigate the long-term effects of foreclosure-induced relocations on adolescents and their subsequent use of credit. We ask whether individuals who experience a foreclosure-induced move between the ages of 10 and 17 are more likely to exhibit signs of credit scarring later in life. To establish a set of counterfactual outcomes, we implement propensity score matching with exact matching on certain characteristics and regression adjustment of the remaining covariate imbalances. We then compare the credit behavior of individuals who experienced a foreclosure-induced move in adolescence to ...
Working Paper
The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets
Over the last decade, 11 states have restricted employers? access to the credit reports of job applicants. We document a significant decline in county-level vacancies after these laws were enacted: Job postings fall by 5.5 percent in affected occupations relative to exempt occupations in the same county and the same occupation nationwide. Cross-sectional heterogeneity in the estimated effects suggests that employers use credit reports as signals: Vacancies fall more in counties with a large share of subprime residents, while they fall less in occupations with other commonly available signals.
Discussion Paper
Debt Relief and the CARES Act: Which Borrowers Face the Most Financial Strain?
In yesterday's post, we studied the expected debt relief from the CARES Act on mortgagors and student debt borrowers. We now turn our attention to the 63 percent of American borrowers who do not have a mortgage or student loan. These borrowers will not directly benefit from the loan forbearance provisions of the CARES Act, although they may be able to receive some types of leniency that many lenders have voluntarily provided. We ask who these borrowers are, by age, geography, race and income, and how does their financial health compare with other borrowers.
Report
Consumer Credit Reporting Data
Since the 2000s, economists across fields have increasingly used consumer credit reporting data for research. We introduce readers to the economics of and the institutional details of these data. Using examples from the literature, we provide practical guidance on how to use these data to construct economic measures of borrowing, consumption, credit access, financial distress, and geographic mobility. We explain what credit scores measure, and why. We highlight how researchers can access credit reporting data via existing datasets or by creating new datasets, including by linking credit ...
Journal Article
The Role of Credit Scores in the Recent Rise in Credit Card Delinquency
Researchers Sánchez and Mori examine the relationship between rising credit scores during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent increases in credit card delinquencies.
Report
Are Recently Issued Credit Card Accounts More Risky?
The author uses Federal Reserve data on the majority of credit card accounts issued by US banks to investigate whether, in recent years versus before the pandemic, credit cards have been issued to consumers who are less (or more) likely to pay off their debts.
Working Paper
BORROWER CREDIT ACCESS AND CREDIT PERFORMANCE AFTER LOAN MODIFICATIONS
While the preventive effect of loan modifications on mortgage default has been well-documented, evidence on the broad consequences of modifications has been fairly limited. Based on two unique loan-level data sets with borrower credit profiles, this study reports novel empirical evidence on how homeowners manage their credit before and after receiving modifications. The paper has several main findings. First, loan modifications improve borrowers? overall credit standing and access to credit. Modifications that provide principal reduction, rate reduction, or greater payment relief, as well as ...
Working Paper
Nudging credit scores in the field: the effect of text reminders on creditworthiness in the United States
Given the fundamental role that credit scores play in day-to-day life in the United States, it is very important to understand what can be done to help individuals improve their credit scores. This question is important in general, and especially important for the low-to-moderate-income (LMI) individuals who likely have a greater need for access to liquidity than higher-income individuals. In this paper the authors report results from a field experiment conducted between early 2013 and early 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts, with LMI taxpayers who were offered credit advising services. Taxpayers ...
Working Paper
Villains or Scapegoats? The Role of Subprime Borrowers in Driving the U.S. Housing Boom
An expansion in mortgage credit to subprime borrowers is widely believed to have been a principal driver of the 2002–2006 U.S. house price boom. By contrast, this paper documents a robust, negative correlation between the growth in the share of purchase mortgages to subprime borrowers and house price appreciation at the county-level during this time. Using two different instrumental variables approaches, we also establish causal evidence that house price appreciation lowered the share of purchase loans to subprime borrowers. Further analysis using micro-level credit bureau data shows that ...