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Tuesday, August 21st, 2018

“Their Wealth Has Vanished”: Baby Boomers File For Bankruptcy In Droves

Author:     Tyler Durden
Source:     ZeroHedge
Publication Date:     Tue, 08/07/2018 - 05:30
 Link: “Their Wealth Has Vanished”: Baby Boomers File For Bankruptcy In Droves
Stephan:   This is the reality of American society. Much of it driven by the fact that we do not have healthcare in the United States, we have an illness profit system. The country would be transformed within five years if we had universal 100% Medicare for everyone. It would also be about $1,3 trillion a year cheaper, which would pay for all elder care, childcare and food programs.

Credit: Greater Good Science Center – UC Berkeley

An alarming number of older Americans are being forced into bankruptcy, as the rate of people 65 and older who have filed has never been higher – at three times what it was in 1991, while the rate of bankruptcies among Americans age 65 and older has more than doubled, according to a new study by the The Bankruptcy Project.

Older Americans are increasingly likely to file consumer bankruptcy, and their representation among those in bankruptcy has never been higher. Using data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we find more than a two-fold increase in the rate at which older Americans (age 65 and over) file for bankruptcy and an almost five-fold increase in the percentage of older persons in the U.S. bankruptcy system. The magnitude of growth in older Americans in bankruptcy is so large that the broader trend of an aging U.S. population can explain only a small portion of the effect.

The median senior filing bankruptcy enters the system $17,390 in debt, vs. an average net worth of $250,000 for their non-bankrupt peers.

According to the study, […]

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1 Comment

  1. Dariel Garner on Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at 4:32 am

    I had never seen “bankruptcy” described as being part of the “social safety net” which leads me to realize that our defacto debtor prisons, poverty draft, payday loans and much else are similarly situated.