Revisiting How Many People Have Filed Bankruptcy

Belisa Pang has an important new paper out about repeat filers, "The Bankruptcy Revolving Door."  Using new techniques and as well as a database of credit reports, she estimates the percentage of bankruptcy filers who are repeat filers is 36%. In 2023, she estimates the figure was 46%. The paper also explores the reasons for repeat filings. It should be required reading for anyone in the consumer bankruptcy space.

Pang's estimate is much higher than the official statistic from the bankruptcy court records which ask filers to disclose repeat filings in the last eight years. According to the FJC database, 19% of filers since 2014 have checked the box that they filed bankruptcy in the last eight years. For the research data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we collects the date of the last filing. Despite the official language asking about bankruptcy in the last eight years, 16% of those who report a repeat filing are reporting a prior case from more than eight years ago. Thus, I wondered how many prior bankruptcies are actually going unreported. I spot-checked some of our own research data. Using Pang's methodology, I found it was pretty easy to locate cases that do not disclose a repeat filing on the bankruptcy forms, but the court's computer system (PACER) has flagged as a repeat filing. 

Pang's paper caused me to revisit my estimate of how many living Americans have filed bankruptcy. When I did the calculations, I came up with a conservative estimate of 1 in 10. The precise number was 11.1% but because of the heroic assumptions I was making, especially with the repeat filing rate, I called it 1 in 10 to be conservative. In my calculation, I used an assumption, based on the then-current FJC records, that 15.2% of filers are repeat filers. Pang's much higher figure means my estimate is a bit too high. If I plug 36% into the numbers I used then, I come up with 9% of the public having filed bankruptcy. If the repeat filing rate is 46%, the percentage drops to 8% percent. So, it is maybe in 1 in 11 or 1 in 12. That is still not a small number.

Upcoming Public Events for Unjust Debts

More upcoming events open to the public - in person and virtual - for the new book Unjust Debts, including tonight in Washington DC. Join the conversation!

• Monday July 8, 7pm ET: Politics & Prose, with Vicki Shabo, Senior Fellow at New America
• Wednesday, July 17, 3pm ET VIRTUAL: Roosevelt Institute, with think tank director Hannah Kroch-Blegley
• Thursday, July 18, 5:30 PM: Fletcher Free Library, Burlington VT, with Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak
• Sunday, July 21, 10:30 AM: Temple Beth Shalom, Brigantine NJ (contact me for registration information). 
• Friday August 16, 12pm PT/3pm ET VIRTUAL: Berkeley Judicial Institute/Berkeley Civil Justice Research Initiative, with Professor Abbye Atkinson

 

Unjust Debts on the Road

First, thanks to Bob Lawless for his post about my new book. It has been great to engage with people about Unjust Debts so far, and especially appreciated the book making a new Financial Times best books list (links to that and other coverage here). Wanted to note a few upcoming book events for Credit Slips readers:

• June 27 (TONIGHT): Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn NY, in conversation with Zephyr Teachout. Information and RSVP here. 
• July 1 (VIRTUAL): Commonwealth Club World Affairs, in conversation with Senator Elizabeth Warren. Information and registration here. 
• July 8: Politics & Prose, Washington DC, in conversation with Vicki Shabo. Information here. 

Long-run (positive) effects of personal debt relief

Empirical papers on the long-run effects of a personal bankruptcy relief system (i.e., discharge) are rare, so this fascinating new paper caught my eye. The first personal insolvency discharge system in continental Europe appeared in Denmark in 1984, and this paper takes advantage of that long lifespan to mine some rather unique data. The results are unsurprising but very useful in the ongoing debate about the salutary effects of such procedures: "debt relief leads to a large increase in earned income, employment, assets, real estate, secured debt, home ownership, and wealth that persists for more than 25 years after a court ruling." So the benefits of debt relief are not only substantial but robust, as debtors learn their lesson (if there was one to learn) about managing their finances, and they capitalize (literally) on their fresh start. Perhaps most important, the cause of these effects seems to be largely the desired result of any personal discharge system--getting debtors out from under the debilitating thumb of hopelessly unserviceable creditor demands and reactivating them as engaged workers and taxpayers: "The net transition of workers into employment accounts for two thirds of the increase in earned income." Great contribution to the literature on personal insolvency and well worth a read.

About 44% of Chapter 11s are Subchapter V Cases

As many readers will know, Congress created subchapter V to streamline the chapter 11 process and to make it work better for small businesses. It became effective in March 2020, just as the pandemic hit, and was available to businesses with less than $2,500,000 in debts. Congress raised the debt limit to $7,500,000 to make it available to more businesses, and that higher debt limit will sunset on June 21, 2024, unless Congress acts. By all accounts, subchapter V is working as designed, helping small-business owners to continue their businesses. Both the National Bankruptcy Conference and the American Bankruptcy Institute's Task Force on Subchapter V have recommended that Congress make the $7,500,000 debt cap permanent. 

How much does it matter? How many chapter 11 filers use subchapter V? The answer to those questions is more difficult than it should be.  The readily available bankruptcy statistics from the U.S. Courts do not report subchapter V cases, although they should. To answer those questions, I downloaded the integrated bankruptcy petition database from the Federal Judicial Center, which contains every bankruptcy petition filed.

And the answer is . . . in 2023, forty-five percent of chapter 11 debtors used subchapter V. That was 1,854 of the 4,121 chapter 11 cases in 2023. Unfortunately, the database does not have the subchapter V variable for years before 2023. Well it does, but the variable is not reliable for years before 2023. The rest of the post, "below the fold," explains the rest of my math.

Debt-based driving restrictions: new resources

Professor Kate Elengold and UNC Law 2L Michael Leyendecker have just posted very useful reports for no charge on the Social Science Research Network.  In Professor Elengold's words, these reports "classify, catalog, and cite every state law restricting driving privilege based on debt owed to the state or pursuant to a state-controlled system." This includes criminal or civil fines and fees,child support, taxes, tolls, and more. The Twitter announcement of these resources indicates that they welcome additions and corrections, and that a related scholarly article from Professor Elengold will be available soon. 

Here is the driver's license suspension report. 

Here is the car registration suspension report.  

Bankruptcy Filing Rate Is Lowest Since Bankruptcy Code's Enactment--The Question Is Why

There will be around 400,000 total bankruptcy filings in 2021. That figure is historically low. The table to the right shows annual filing figures since 2010, which was the post-2005 peak. The 400,000 filings this year is a 75% reduction from 2010. 

The 400,000 filings in 2021 will be a rate of 1.21 bankruptcy filing per 1,000 persons (using the mid-year, July population estimate). That is the lowest annual rate since the enactment of the Bankruptcy Code. In 1980, the first full calendar year of filings under the new law, there were 1.22 filings per 1,000 persons. In absolute numbers, there were 122,000 more filings in 2021 than in 1980, but there also are over 100 million more people living in the U.S.

Every calendar year since 1980 has had a higher bankruptcy filing rate. Absent some surprisingly high number of filings in December, this year will put an end to that. Ed Flynn's numbers over at the American Bankruptcy Institute show that at least through December 12, the situation has not changed.

Why are bankruptcy filings so low in the midst of a pandemic that has caused so much economic upheaval? Anyone who claims to have an answer to that question is either lying or overconfident. I certainly don't have an answer, but I have some hypotheses suggested by the data, with emphasis on "hypotheses." Below the fold, I explain those hypotheses and conclude with some thoughts about how much lower the filing rate can get.

Personal Insolvency in Asia and Currency Comparison

While Shenzhen has gotten all the good press since its March launch of the first personal bankruptcy regime in Mainland China, a number of other Asian regimes have also been on the move. I recently examined the rapidly developing personal insolvency system in Singapore, and others have done great work on the unique processes in Japan and Korea. As an outsider, I struggle to capture the real feeling of life under these procedures. The challenge is expressed brilliantly by my favorite article on the difficulty of examining legal phenomena that are utterly foreign to the examiner, a paper that sought to answer the question "what was it like to try a rat?" This struggle is particularly acute in a new paper I've just posted on the fascinating evolution of Shenzhen's new law from its roots in a little-known 2008 consumer insolvency law in Taiwan. The Taiwan law is still in effect, of course (as amended in important respects), and the rocky experience of its first decade offers important lessons for personal insolvency policymakers in Asia and beyond. In both Taiwan and Shenzhen, a potential continuing challenge that intrigues me is among the most important and impactful in any such law--the measure of "necessary" household expenses to be budgeted to debtors for the purgatory period of three years (in Taiwan, it's six!) preceding a discharge. Both Taiwan and Shenzhen chose the social assistance minimum income; basically, the poverty level. Taiwan recently increased this by 20% after years of criticism of forcing bankrupt debtors into the extreme austerity of living within these tight budgets. Shenzhen has decided not to go beyond the poverty level, at least for now.

Expressing the strictures of these poverty levels in useful comparative terms is really difficult for me. Official exchange rates are quite misleading when the question is "what is it like to try to make do on X [local currency units] for three years in [X country]?" Purchasing power parity exchange rates likely get closer to the mark, but with China, I'm not even sure that approach captures the pain (or ease) that debtors in the "discharge examination period" must endure. The figures I'm wrestling with are 1950 yuan in Shenzhen and about 18,000 new Taiwan dollars (15,000 x 1.2) in Taipei (less in the outlying areas). I vaguely understand these to correspond to about US$465 and US$600, respectively, per month, but this just seems untenable to me. How could anyone survive on these amounts for 36 months in Shenzhen or 72 months in Taipei? Granted, both sets of figures are per person, so a debtor caring for parents and/or children might end up with several multiples of these figures per month, but even then, supporting a family of four on US$1860 per month for three years in a major city like Shenzhen still strikes me as so austere as to dissuade people from seeking relief. Am I just out of touch with the reality of modern financial struggles generally (I know some low-income Americans also strain to make ends meet on somewhat similar budgets), or am I not understanding something about life in big-city China, or are the figures just not reflecting the feeling of life within these limits? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Recommended reading: Afsharipour on Women and M&A

For many reasons and no reasons, blogging on Credit Slips during the COVID-19 pandemic has not come easy, or at all, for me (Twitter, a different story). Rejoining the Credit Slips conversation by recommending scholarship relevant to bankrupty-land even if not directly about bankruptcy-land. 

Today's recommendation is an empirical study, Women and M&A, by Professor Afra Afsharipour.  

Chapter 11 has become the forum for lots of mergers and acquisition activity, including and particularly in sales outside of plans. Some think that's great and others are skeptical (I have work in progress that further tallies the costs of unbundling chapter 11's package deal, or what I call bankruptcy a la carte). While Professor Afsharipour's article does not focus on M&A in bankruptcy, the law firms appearing in the study will be familiar names in the larger chapter 11 practice world. 

Many readers likely will have a prediction about the demography of the people taking the lead in M&A. Check out how your prediction compares to Professor Afsharipour's findings and why her findings matter. Read more about and download the article here.  

Bankruptcy Filing Rates Not Rising, May Go Lower

The latest data from Epiq Systems shows that year-over-year bankruptcy filings dropped again in May after an increase in April. The April and May figures are particularly important because they give us two months of year-over-year comparisons with post-Covid data.

In April, there was an average of 1,860 filings per day which was an increase of 6.4% from the previous April. That uptick made me wonder whether we were beginning to see the long-predicted increase in bankruptcy filings because of the pandemic. That speculation proved premature because the May figure was 1,738 filings per day, which was not only a decrease from April but a year-over-year decline of 13.1%.

Whether the April increase or the May decrease ends up being the one-month blip is something we will learn over the next few months. It is that kind of insight you are looking for when you come to this blog--the future will reveal the future. It is much easier, however, to come up with a story that April was the anomaly than vice versa.

Bankruptcy filings are seasonal, spiking in the early spring. Ronald Mann and Katie Porter persuasively documented the reason for that is tax refunds going to pay the cost of the bankruptcy filing. Usually the effect runs from February to April with a peak in March. This year, the IRS tax filing statistics show that refunds ended up being higher overall than last year but started more slowly. There was also a third round of stimulus payments in March that capped out at lower-income levels and at levels that are more typical for bankruptcy filers. For these reasons, what we saw in April might have just been the usual annual seasonality in the filing rate, just pushed back a bit by later-filing tax filers and the stimulus money.

Bankruptcy Filings Are Still Super Low--Don't Believe the Headlines

Headlines recently appeared in the usual places about a big March jump in bankruptcy filings. It is true that March 2021 total bankruptcy filings were 43,425 (according to the Epiq Systems data) and that was a 39.1% increase from February 2021. That looks like a big jump. Of course, March is a longer month, and in fact this March had four more business days than February--almost an entire extra work week. Calculating the filing rate per business day, the March 2021 filing rate was a 14.9% increase from February 2021.

That still feels notable, but let's be careful--very careful. Bankruptcy filings are at historically low levels. When any data series hits a trough and starts creeping back to an old base rate, the increases will feel really big although we are really only getting back to what we had experienced previously. The February filing rate was 1.13 filings per 1,000 persons, the lowest since January 2006 when bankruptcy filings fell to almost nothing after the surge to beat the effective date of the 2005 bankruptcy amendments. (To give you a sense of the surge, the October 2005 rate was 25.53 filings per 1,000 persons.)

Dissecting the Increase in Chapter 11 Filings

I just finished teaching an intensive one-week course at Cardozo School of Law designed to introduce students broadly to bankruptcy and reorganization. The course covered debt collection, consumer bankruptcy, large public-company reorganization, small business reorganization (including the SBRA), municipal bankruptcy, cannabis and bankruptcy, third-party releases, and even a bit on chapter 15.  A theme throughout the week was changes in filings during the pandemic. To impress upon students that chapter 11 filings indeed are up, but that doesn't mean they are up everywhere across the country, I created this map. It details year-over-year increases or decreases in chapter 11 filings  based on jurisdiction.

I relied on data from the American Bankruptcy Institute / Epiq detailing total chapter 11 filings in 2019 and 2020. The map thus includes non-commercial chapter 11 filings. Historically, based on data from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, a very small percentage of chapter 11 filings are non-business-debt filings--historically, about 6%. The more important caveat is that the map counts each filing as a case, even if the case is that of a "child" company filing with a "parent." See Slipster Bob Lawless's prior post about how parent/child filings can make it seem like commercial filings are rising much more than they actually are. Regardless, across the country, in 2020, chapter 11 filings generally are down. And where chapter 11 filings have increased, they seemingly have increased a lot.

Update on Churches Filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

As parts of the country are counting ballots, I thought I'd post about counting church chapter 11 cases. The headlines about churches and other religious organizations filing chapter 11 still focus predominately -- almost exclusively -- on Catholic Diocese filings. As of June 2020, 27 Catholic religious organizations have filed chapter 11, as detailed on a site put together by Professor Marie Reilly. But Catholic religious organizations' filings are a very small sliver of churches filing bankruptcy, as my prior research has shown. The last time that I updated my count of religious organization chapter 11 cases was at the end of 2017, and the last time I updated denominations and demographics of the congregations that file was in 2013. Since then, I've continued to track religious organizations' chapter 11 filings, using the same methodology, through the end of 2019. 

Preliminary results are in. Highlights: churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations are still filing bankruptcy, and the denominations and demographics of the congregations that filed have remained basically the same.*

As shown on the graph to the right, between 2014 and 2019, an average of 59 religious organizations filed chapter 11 each year.** This is lower than the average of 87 cases between 2006 and 2013 that I've previously reported, but it is consistent with a decline and leveling off of consumer bankruptcy filings overall during this period. As I've noted, in the past, religious organization chapter 11 filings tracked personal bankruptcy filings, not business bankruptcy filings. This continues to be true.

Find tables with congregation denominations and demographics, and some more detailed discussion after the jump.

Most of What You Read about the Bankruptcy Filing Rate Is Wrong

A popular narrative is that bankruptcy filing rates are increasing dramatically. That is not true. If you want to know what is happening with the bankruptcy filing rate during covid-19, the best source is Ed Flynn's analyses over at the American Bankruptcy Institute (current analysis here with a historical archive here). Here some facts, using my own data as well as Flynn's very useful numbers:

1. Total bankruptcy filings have had some modest gains in recent weeks after falling off the cliff early in the crisis, but total filings remain down 33% on a year-over-year basis.
2. The number of chapter 11s filings has been very artificially inflated by counting affiliate filings. If one only counts the "parent" and "solo" filings, the chapter 11 rate actually declined in July!
3. The decline in chapter 13 filings has been much deeper than the decline in chapter 7 filings.

Before expanding on each of these points and like I wrote in an earlier post with the same theme, I am not Pollyannaish about the economy. Things are as bad as they seem. My plea is for accuracy. An understanding of whether and when people turn to the bankruptcy system to help them deal with their business or personal issues makes that system more effective.

How Many People Have Filed Bankruptcy?

The past few days I had been wondering exactly how many persons in the U.S. have filed bankruptcy. By that, I don't mean how many filed last week, last month, or last year. Rather, how many persons walking around the U.S. have ever filed a bankruptcy case? My estimate is around 10% or 33 million persons. Here is the math.

Chapter 11 Filings in May Are Not Up as Much as Everybody Will Say There Are

Prediction: you will begin to see stories about an explosion of chapter 11 filings in May 2020. Well, that is not much of a prediction because I already have seen two. Chapter 11 filings did not explode in May.

A few weeks ago, I posted about the huge drop in overall bankruptcy filings and what looks like a modest rise in chapter 11 filings. I did not want to venture more because chapter 11 filings are hard to count. Every petition filed by every subsidiary in a corporate group gets counted as a case, and the number of subsidiaries in a corporate group is arbitrary. Thus, one economic unit can generate what looks like many bankruptcy filings.

Total Bankruptcy Filings Remain Low, Chapter 11s Not So Much

(Updated and corrected, 5/22). An earlier post noted that bankruptcy filings were down substantially over 50% the first two weeks of April. As the American Bankruptcy Institute reported, bankruptcy filings declined by 46% over the entire month and on a year-over-year basis. I wondered whether the expected increase in bankruptcy filings had begun, and the answer appears to be "not yet."

Using PACER docket searches, I get the following filing numbers for the past six weeks. The decline in filings for the first two weeks of May was roughly the same as the last two weeks of April. There were the same number of business days in all these time periods so the numbers should be comparable:

Total Bankruptcy Filings
	2019	2020	change
April 1 - April 15	33,017	16,097	-51.2%
April 16 - April 30	38,289	22,347	-41.6%
May 1 - May 15	31,958	18,578	-41.8%

A Coming Consumer Bankruptcy Tsunami, Wave, or Ripple?

With the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about a coming surge of consumer bankruptcy filings. In the very short-term, however, bankruptcy filing numbers are down. According to data from Epiq Systems, daily bankruptcy filings declined 18.4% in March 2020 on a year-over-year basis. March 2020 filings were 62,847 as compared to 73,521 in March 2019 but were spread out over one more business day (and hence had an even lower daily filing rate).

The downward trend appears to have continued in April. I say "appear to" because the numbers are down so much that I wonder whether my computations are accurate. Immediate national bankruptcy filing numbers are hard to assemble. Using docket searches on Bloomberg Law that produced all of the bankruptcy cases filed on particular dates, I got the following national bankruptcy filing counts in 2020 as compared to 2019

	2019	2020	decline
last seven days of March	21,656	15,096	-30.3%
first seven days of April	14,886	7,432	-50.1%
second seven days of April	15,602	7,225	-53.7%

If anyone has better data or can confirm these numbers, please leave a comment. Even if these numbers are not spot on, I am confident enough to say there have been big drops in consumer bankruptcy filings the first two weeks in April.

Consumer Bankruptcy, Done Correctly, To Help Struggling Americans

Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled her new plan to reform the consumer bankruptcy system. The plan is simple, yet elegant. It is based on actual data and research (including some of my own with Consumer Bankruptcy Project co-investigators Slipster Bob Lawless, former Slipster, now Congresswoman Katie Porter, and former Slipster Debb Thorne). Most importantly, I believe it will make the consumer bankruptcy system work for American families. And, as a bonus, it will tackle the bad behavior that big banks and corporations currently engage in once people file, like trying to collect already discharged debts, and some non-bankruptcy financial issues, such as "zombie" mortgages.

In short, the plan provides for one chapter that everyone files, combined with a menu of options to respond to each families' particular needs. It undoes some of the most detrimental amendments that came with the 2005 bankruptcy law, including the means test. In doing so, it sets new, undoubtedly more effective rules for the discharge of student loan debt, for modification of home mortgages, and for keeping cars. It also undoes "smaller" amendments that likely went unnoticed, but may have deleterious effects on people's lives. Warren's plan gets rid of the current prohibition on continuing to pay union dues, the payment of which may be critical to allowing people who file bankruptcy to keep their jobs and keep on their feet. Similarly, the plan eliminates problems debtors face paying rent during their bankruptcy cases, which can lead to eviction.

One chapter that everyone files means that the continued racial disparities in chapter choice my co-authors and I have documented will disappear. No means test, combined with less documentation, as provided by Warren's plan, means that the most time-consuming attorney tasks will go away. Attorney's fees should decrease. Warren's plan also provides for the payment of fees over time. People will not have to put off filing for bankruptcy for years while they struggle in the "sweatbox." Costly "no money down" bankruptcy options should disappear. People will have the chance to enter the bankruptcy system in time to save what little they have, which research has shown is key to people surviving and thriving post-bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy Filing Rate Remains Flat

Every month I see stories about the bankruptcy rate moving up and down. The truth is that the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate has remained flat over about the past four years.

The table to the right shows the total number of bankruptcy filings, consumer and business, using data from Epiq. For 2019, the figure is an estimate. For each of the past two years, 85.3% of the yearly bankruptcy filings had occurred by October 31. Extrapolating from the 648,000 bankruptcy filings through October 31 of this year, the total number of bankruptcy filings by year end will be about 760,000. That is not much different than the 767,000 in 2017 or the 755,000 in 2018.

Driven to Bankruptcy — New Research from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project

In America, people drive — to work, to the doctor, to the grocery store, to their kids' daycare, to see their aging parents. Research shows that car ownership increases the probability of employment and number of hours worked; households without cars have lower incomes and are more likely to be in poverty. In short, cars are essential. Household financial distress can threaten people's cars, and with them, the day-to-day stability that car ownership brings. People thus may file bankruptcy, in part, to save their cars.

Although there is a substantial literature on financial distress and home ownership, the literature on car ownership, financial distress, and bankruptcy is thin. In Driven to Bankruptcy (available via SSRN, forthcoming in the Wake Forest Law Review), Slipster Bob Lawless, past Slipster Debb Thorne, and I document what happens to car owners and their car loans when they enter bankruptcy.

In brief, we find that people who file bankruptcy own automobiles at the same rate as the general population. This means that over the last ten years, 15.1 million people filed for bankruptcy owning 16.4 million cars. The majority of these cars, particularly a household's most valuable car, entered bankruptcy encumbered with a hefty loan. And most debtors want to keep their cars, particularly their most valuable and second most valuable cars.

Counting Healthcare Chapter 11 Filings: Are There More Than Expected?

This post is co-authored with my student, Kelsey Brandes, rising 3L, IU Maurer School of Law

Reports of hospitals, physician practices, healthcare systems, and clinics filing for bankruptcy have become seemingly increasingly well publicized in recent years. At the beginning of this year, Pew released a study detailing why rural hospitals are in greater financial jeopardy in non-medicaid expansion states in the wake of the ACA. This may foreshadow more hospital closures and possibly more bankruptcy filings. With this in mind, one of my students at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Kelsey Brandes (with whom I'm co-posting), decided to survey healthcare businesses that had filed chapter 11 between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2017 with the goal of assessing how many healthcare businesses filed chapter 11 and why they filed, as based on their disclosure statements and other filings.

This survey found that, after combining jointly-administered cases, on average, 38 healthcare organizations filed per year during the study's ten year period, as shown by year on this graph.

More Data, Please!

Effective reform requires detailed knowledge of exactly what's being reformed. This is especially true of complex systems like corporate and individual insolvency regimes, with numerous inputs and outputs and carefully counterbalanced policy objectives. Two recent papers accentuate an acute weakness in global insolvency reform development--a lack of reliable and comprehensive data on the operation of existing systems, which will of course infect future planned procedures, as well. The global insolvency team at the IMF notes this problem in the context of its current advisory operations, and Adam Feibelman anticipates this problem with respect to India's developing insolvency and bankruptcy law. Both suggest a solution in more careful attention to data production and tracking. Both papers are interesting reading for those concerned with a more responsible approach to global insolvency policy-making, where for far too long it seems the old joke about empirical analysis has rung true: anecdote is not the singular of data.

New (From the Archives) Paper on Determinants of Personal Bankruptcy

This working paper is a longitudinal empirical study of lower-income homeowners, including a subset of bankruptcy filers, produced with an interdisciplinary team of cross-campus colleagues, including Professor Roberto Quercia, director of UNC's Center for Community Capital. We just posted this version on SSRN for the first time yesterday in light of continued interest in its questions and findings. The abstract does not give too much detail (see the paper for that), but here it is:

Personal Bankruptcy Decisions Before and After Bankruptcy Reform

Abstract

We examine the personal bankruptcy decisions of lower-income homeowners before and after the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). Econometric studies suggest that personal bankruptcy is explained by financial gain rather than adverse events, but data constraints have hindered tests of the adverse events hypothesis. Using household level panel data and controlling for the financial benefit of filing, we find that stressors related to cash flow, unexpected expenses, unemployment, health insurance coverage, medical bills, and mortgage delinquencies predict bankruptcy filings a year later. At the federal level, the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform explains a decrease in filings over time in counties that experienced lower filing rates.

Older Americans’ Rising Bankruptcy Filings

Older Americans (age 65 and over) are increasingly likely to file bankruptcy and now comprise a larger proportion of the people who file bankruptcy -- and the effects are not small. Using data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, in a new working paper just posted to SSRN -- Graying of U.S. Bankruptcy: Fallout from Life in a Risk Society -- my co-authors (past Slipster Debb Thorne, Slipster Bob Lawless, and past Slipster Katie Porter) and I find a more than two-fold increase between 1991 and now in the rate at which older Americans file bankruptcy. We further find an almost five-fold increase in the percentage of older persons in the 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.

In the paper, we link older Americans’ increased filing rates with the shrinking social safety net. A story published today in the New York Times (on actual paper and on the front page!) does an exceptional job of both describing our study and detailing the ways in which the risks of aging have been off-loaded onto older Americans: “vanishing pensions, soaring medical expenses, inadequate savings.” The story also highlights the financial and life travails of a few older Americans who filed bankruptcy. Their struggles stem from declining income, lost insurance, and unmanageable medical expenses.   

Savings Plans and Chapter 13

David Jones, Chief US Bankruptcy Judge of the Southern District of Texas, has just posted a nifty empirical study of the effects of savings plans on the success of Chapter 13 filings. And, yes, part of the cool study is figuring out how to measure what counts as success in a bankruptcy filing.  The study takes advantage of a natural experiment in the Texas courts and has a bunch of fascinating findings, including about the impact of lawyers and legal culture on the choices that end up being made by the subjects of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Part of the reason I know about this study is that David was doing a graduate degree at Duke (in the judicial masters program) and I got to see the project at its inception stage in the thesis workshop that I run with Jack Knight. All of the credit goes to David though (and his wonderful advisor, John de Figueiredo) -- a fact that will be obvious to my fellow slipsters who know that I don't know squat about Chapter 13. But this is a fun study in terms of the design and findings regardless of whether you love Chapter 13 (okay, I realize that everyone else who reads this blog probably does in fact like or love Chapter 13).  It takes a basic fact about the inevitable fluctuations in expenses that almost everyone has to deal with, and tests what happens when these provision is made for these fluctuations ahead of time (versus when it is not).  Savings plans do indeed seem to make a difference; but a bunch of other factors also appear to matter - some of them quite surprising.  Clearly, as David emphasizes at the end of the paper, there is a lot here that is worthy of further investigation (and maybe legislative change).

The abstract for the draft on ssrn (that is forthcoming in the American Bankruptcy Institute's journal) reads:

This paper examines the effects of debtor savings on the viability of chapter 13 bankruptcy plans. The paper further examines the impact of lawyer culture, debtor participation in the bankruptcy process, and judicial activism in the use of the savings program by chapter 13 debtors. Using a data set of randomly selected chapter 13 bankruptcy cases filed in the Southern District of Texas, the analysis demonstrates that while savings has a direct positive impact on the success of chapter 13 plans, the degree of that success is significantly influenced by the views held by debtors' lawyers, chapter 13 trustees, and judges.

 

Please support empirical study of decision making in business insolvency

Leiden University in the Netherlands has established an impressive strength in insolvency law studies. For example, following his retirement, the eminent Bob Wessels left his massive collection of literature on the subject to a foundation, which permanently lent the collection to the school as the Bob Wessels Insolvency Law Collection. Credit Slips readers can support the efforts of Leiden researchers without parting with their libraries by simply responding to a 15-minute online questionnaire. Niek Strohmaier is a Ph.D. candidate at Leiden conducting a study on judgment and decision making within the areas of business rescue and insolvency law. As he puts it, "We offer a novel perspective on these fields by utilizing the interdisciplinary nature of our research team and by adopting a social sciences approach with empirical research methods." If there's one thing that Credit Slips can rally around, it's empirical research! So I'm hoping we can show Niek our community spirit by responding to his survey at this link (http://leidenuniv.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_51GewBINfBAyfzv). The survey has received a good response from the professional membership of INSOL Europe, but I hope we can supercharge this qualitative data collection with responses from North America and elsewhere, as well. Thanks for your help!

People’s Pre-Bankruptcy Struggles -- New Paper from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project

The current Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP)’s co-investigators (myself, Slipster Bob Lawless, and past Slipsters Katie Porter & Debb Thorne) just posted to SSRN our new article (forthcoming in Notre Dame Law Review), Life in the Sweatbox. “Sweatbox” refers to the financial sweatbox—the time before people file bankruptcy, which is when they often are on the brink of defaulting on their debts and lenders can charge high interest and fees. In the article, we focus on debtors’ descriptions of their time in the sweatbox.

Based on CBP data, we find that people are living longer in the sweatbox before filing bankruptcy than they have in the past. Two-thirds of people who file bankruptcy reported struggling with their debts for two or more years before filing. One-third of people reported struggling for more than five years, double the frequency from the CBP’s survey of people who filed bankruptcy in 2007. For those people who struggle for more than two years before filing—the “long strugglers”—we find that their time in the sweatbox is marked by persistent debt collection calls, the loss of homes and other property, and going without healthcare, food, and utilities. And although long strugglers do not file bankruptcy until long after the benefits outweigh the costs, they still report being ashamed of needing to file.

Other (Non-Religious) Non-Profit Organizations Also File Bankruptcy

Yesterday I posted about the number of religious organizations that filed chapter 11 between 2006 and 2017, and how their filings track fluctuations in consumer bankruptcy filings during those years. Non-religious non-profit organizations also file chapter 11, but in fewer numbers than religious organizations. As shown in this graph, between 2006 and 2017, a mean of 44 other non-profits filed chapter 11 per year (note: I count jointly-administered cases as one case).

 In comparison, a mean of 79 religious organizations filed chapter 11 per year between 2006 and 2017. Over these twelve years, 36% of all chapter 11 cases filed by non-profit organizations were filed by non-religious non-profits.

Churches Are Still Filing Bankruptcy

Not only are religious organizations still filing under chapter 11. As in prior years, they continue to file under chapter 11 in line with fluctuations in consumer bankruptcy filings. Find a couple graphs below to show this. But first, some background.

In my prior work, I analyzed all the chapter 11 cases filed by religious organizations from the beginning of 2006 through the end of 2013. (I define any organization with operations primarily motivated by faith-based principles as religious.) I found that these chapter 11 cases were filed predominately by small, non-denominational Christian churches, which mainly were black churches (80% of more of their members are black). And, also, that the timing of the filings tracked consumer bankruptcy cases (chapters 7, 11, and 13), not business bankruptcy filings, but lagged by one year. That is, if consumer bankruptcy filings decreased in a given year, religious organizations' chapter 11 filings decreased in the next year. I linked this result to how religious organizations' leaders came to think about using bankruptcy to deal with their organizations' financial problems.

Since my original data collection, four years has passed. I thus recently identified all the religious organizations that filed under chapter 11 between the beginning of 2014 through the end of 2017. During these four years, religious organizations continued to file, but in smaller numbers per year, as shown in this graph (note: I count jointly-administered cases as one case).

Audio Recordings of Bankruptcy Court: News from Delaware

Several Credit Slips posts from earlier this year (here and here) focused on the virtues of courts releasing digital audio recordings of hearings, and specified the Judicial Conference authority for doing so. Over the summer, I found about three dozen bankruptcy courts for which at least one audio recording had been posted on a court docket in the prior year, albeit with significant variation in frequency of posting. 

It is great to be able to report that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware has joined the group of bankruptcy courts using this technology  (announcement here with the details). Proceedings before Judge Carey are the first to be posted, with other judges' hearings potentially to follow. 

 

 

Bankruptcy, Illness, and Injury: More Data

A while back, political scientist Mirya Holman and I wrote a book chapter making sense of existing (and dueling) studies of the relationship between medical problems and bankruptcy, and presenting new findings from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project on debtors who entered into payment plans with their medical providers and fringe and informal borrowing for medical bills. Given the enduring interest in household management of out-of-pocket expenses associated with illness and injury, we recently posted an unformatted version of the chapter so it can be useful to more researchers and advocates.  Download it here.

ProPublica: The Bankruptcy System Fails Black Americans

It's been a busy day, but before I sign off for the evening, I would be remiss not to flag Paul Kiel's outstanding piece that came out this morning, How the Bankruptcy System is Failing Black Americans. ProPublica and The Atlantic co-published the article. An extensive data analysis also accompanies the article. Anyone who follows Credit Slips will want to read these pieces.

Kiel finds chapter 13 filings are about three times higher in predominately black zip codes as compared to predominately white zip codes. Of course, these findings very much parallel our earlier work, which I blogged about here back in 2012. Like our work, the disparities Kiel finds remain even after statistically controlling for financial and other variables that should determine chapter choice. Because chapter 13 is generally a more expensive choice than a chapter 7, requiring a payment plan that many debtors don't complete (and hence don't receive a discharge), the racial differences are troubling.

Where Kiel's article really shines are the interviews with the attorneys and bankruptcy debtors in Memphis, Tennessee. The interviews put faces and stories to the statistics that we can't do in academic studies. Check out Kiel's work.

An Explanation for the Low Bankruptcy Rates: Debt

Yesterday, I noted the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate of 2.38 per 1,000 persons is at historic lows. The next question is always why. In this post, I am going to try to walk through an explanation in four graphs. The upshot is that consumer debt is low but rising. As I like to say, it takes years of study to come to the conclusion that people file bankruptcy because they are in debt. This is not to say that other factors are not contributors -- unemployment, general economic conditions -- but the primary macroeconomic driver of bankruptcy filings is the amount of debt on household balance sheets.

Bankruptcy Filings Holding Steady for the First Half of 2017

Using data from Epiq Systems, we appear to be on track for 774,000 bankruptcy filings for the 2017 calendar year. That would basically be the same rate of filings as in 2016 when total filings were just under 772,000. This calculation comes from a simple extrapolation. There were just under 400,000 bankruptcy filings for the first six months of this year. To get an estimate of what filings will be for the entire year, we cannot simply double the six-month figure because bankruptcy filings tend to be higher in the first part of a year. In the past two years, the first six calendar months have seen 51.6% of the total filings for the year. Thus, just under 400,000 filings for the first six months of a calendar year would imply about 774,000 filings for the entire year.

New Article from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project: Attorneys’ Fees and Chapter Choice

Many of us on Credit Slips have been part of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), a long-term research project studying people who file chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy. Several years ago, some of us blogged about the writings from the last CBP iteration in 2007.  In 2013, the CBP was relaunched as an ongoing data collection effort. The CBP’s current co-investigators – myself, Bob Lawless, Katie Porter, and Debb Thorne – recently posted “No Money Down” Bankruptcy, the first article analyzing data from the Current CBP (data from 2013-2015), combined with 2007 CPB data. The article focuses on the timing of when debtors are required to pay their bankruptcy attorneys to report on the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of debtors paying nothing in attorneys’ fees before filing chapter 13.

This nationwide phenomenon raises questions about how people are accessing bankruptcy and the extent of the benefits they receive from the system. The phenomenon also explains some prior findings about the intersection of race and bankruptcy filings. And it adds to our knowledge about regional disparities in the percentage of people who file chapter 7 versus chapter 13 bankruptcies.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Bond Workouts But Were Afraid to Ask

There's a great new paper available on out-of-court restructuring and the Trust Indenture Act.   The New Bond Workouts is up on SSRN.  From the abstract it sounds pretty darn amazing—a new, empirically based analysis of bond restructurings that rediscovers a long-forgotten intercreditor duty of good faith: 

What's Wrong with the Bankruptcy Courts?

The Judiciary Data and Analysis Office of the Administrative Office of the US Courts has launched a new feature called "Just the Facts," highlighting statistical trends in the US judiciary. Table 2 and Chart 3 of the inaugural report reflect a curious spike in the appellate reversal rate in bankruptcy cases in 2015. While the reversal rate for both ordinary civil cases and bankruptcy cases in the Courts of Appeals had hovered steadily around 10-12% from 2011 to 2014, the reversal rate in bankruptcy cases suddenly shot up to double that, 24% (!), in 2015. It is not entirely clear to me whether this is reversal of the Bankruptcy Courts' rulings or the District Courts' rulings (it may be a bit of both, taking into account direct appeals, etc.), but in either case, whoa! Anyone have any idea what happened here? Why did the appellate courts get so mad at the lower courts in bankruptcy cases all of a sudden the year before last? I wonder if this continued in 2016. Lots of Stern reversals? Something else? Curious.

UPDATE 1/31/17: Bankruptcy statistics guru, Ed Flynn (whose fabulous work you've probably seen in the ABI Journal), helped me to understand that (1) the statistics referenced here (from Tables B-1 and B-5)  are for appeals from District Courts to Courts of Appeals, as BAP cases and District Court bankruptcy appeals are reported elsewhere (Tables BAP-1 and -2 and C-7, none of which indicates the numbers of reversals at these intermediate appeal levels), (2) the 110 merits reversals in 2015 come predominantly from the 11th Circuit and involve mostly one appellant, (3) we can probably now guess who it was and therefore what happened: Bank of America's appeals of wholly underwater second mortgage stripdown in Ch. 7  had to be granted (lower courts reversed) after the Supreme Court reversed the aberrant 11th Circuit position on allowing such stripdowns in Caulkett in mid-2015. Mystery most likely solved. Thanks, Ed!

Bankruptcy Filings for 2017 -- Let's Say 767,000

According to Epiq Systems, there were 771, 894 total U.S. bankruptcy filings in 2016, a decline of 5.8% from 2015. The overall annual decline in 2015 was 10.0% and was 11.8% in 2014.  As I noted yesterday, the rate of decrease is decreasing.

At the beginning of 2016, I projected 780,000 filings for the year. That forecast was only 1.0% off. Pride goeth before a fall. Here is my thinking for 2017.

Bankruptcy Rate Rises in December . . . A Blip and Not a Blip

Something happened in the U.S. bankruptcy courts that had not happened since October 2010. The daily filing rate increased on a year-over-year basis. There were 56,394 filings in December 2016 as compared to 53,844 in the previous December. Also, because the 2016 filings were spread over one less business day than in 2015, the rise represented a 9.7% increase in the daily filing rate. The lighter-red line in the graph to right the shows just how dramatic the spike was.

Civil Rights and Economic Justice in a New Era

Sharing news of this post-election civil rights conference on December 2, 2016 that, notably for Credit Slips, features pathbreaking research by Professors Mechele Dickerson and Bob Lawless (in collaboration with Dov Cohen and the late Jean Braucher) on the intersection of race with debt and bankruptcy and an exploration of how this research informs policymaking and advocacy going forward. Time permitting, I will address a different intersection between race and debt: collecting judgments arising from police misconduct when cities file for bankruptcy. Thanks to Professor Ted Shaw and the Center for Civil Rights for recognizing the role debtor-creditor research can play in the quest for equality. 

Register using this link.

 

Annual U.S. Bankruptcy Filings on Track for 6.7% Decline

It has been a while since I last checked in on bankruptcy filing rates. The arrival of the latest figures from Epiq Systems was a welcome reminder to do so.

We are at the halfway point for the year, and the U.S. has had 398,000 bankruptcy filings. It is tempting to simply double that figure to get an estimate of what filings will total for all of 2016, but that estimate would be too high. Bankruptcy filings are somewhat more concentrated in the first six months of the calendar, which have accounted for about 52% of yearly filings for the past two years. Extrapolating from recent experience would mean there will be 764,000 filings for the calendar year.

That would be a 6.7% decline in filings from 2015. Back in January, I forecasted a 5% decline or 780,000 filings for 2016. Given that we are well within the confidence interval of that estimate, I will take that. Although we still have half the year left to go, the model I use for the forecasting looks to be holding up.

In terms of trends, we have had 68 straight months of year-over-year declines in the daily filing rate. The annualized filing rate per 1,000 currently stands at 2.46. The graph shows a 12-month moving average for filings per 1,000 persons since 2008. The discerning eye will note the tail of the graph is flattening. The year-over-year decline is slowing. Where we saw double-digit declines in 2013-14, the declines are in the 5%-8% figures now.

2016 Bankruptcy Forecast -- Let's Say 780,000

Forecasting U.S. bankruptcy filings for this year was a little more complicated. In a comment to my post about the total 2015 bankruptcy filings, Erich Fabricius made the astute observation that December 2016 saw the introduction of new bankruptcy forms and that could explain my befuddlement at the abnormally large 14.8% decline for December in terms of year-over-year daily filing rates. November, in contrast, saw almost no decline in the year-over-year rate, which is also unusual. The relatively stronger numbers in November suggests that attorneys were perhaps trying to beat the deadline before the new forms went into effect. The effect would not have to be huge -- shifting 5,000 filings from December into November would have been enough to create this effect.

What that means is my preferred mathematical model to predict bankruptcy filings for the next year has to start with the immediately previous two months being untypical months. If I run the model with the actual data, I get 800,000 filings. If I "correct" the numbers for November and December to what would have been expected had recent monthly trends continued, the model predicts 782,000 filings. The model controls for the amount of outstanding consumer credit and national personal income and has proven accurate in the past. 

Bankruptcy Filings Drop 10% in 2015

According to the latest figures from Epiq Systems, total U.S. bankruptcy filings dropped 10% in 2015. The yearly total was 819,240 compared to 910,090 the previous year. As bankruptcy experts know, these figures are low. In 2015, there were 2.55 bankruptcy petitions per 1,000 persons, the lowest figure since 1989, ignoring the statistical gyrations around the 2005 bankruptcy law. If the decline keeps up, we won't even have to ignore the 2005-06 statistical gyrations for the statement to be true.

Last January, when forecasting the number of 2015 filings, I wrote, "a good estimate for 2015 bankruptcy filings is 800,000." That turned out to be not too bad of a forecast, off by only 2,5%. As the model I used seems to have been a good prediction, I will try it again and post the results here on Credit Slips.

Before I go off to crunch numbers, one other thing caught my eye in the latest numbers. The daily filing rate for December was only 2,446, which was a year-over-year decline of 14.8%. The decline in U.S. bankruptcy filings had been slowing, and I was expecting the decline to eventually flatten out. December is an unusually slow month for bankruptcy filings, but it is an unusually slow month every year. I am always cautious about extrapolating too much from one month of data, but the size of the decline in December took me by surprise. 

Servicers Serve the Interests of the Lender, NOT the Student Loan Borrower

I have enormous respect and appreciation for the CFPB and the wonderful and talented and committed folks who work there. Thus I am mystified that in their efforts to improve servicing of student loans and directing of student loan at-risk borrowers to the window that would help them, they continue to misunderstand the basic nature of capitalism and its profit motive and the borrower-lender relationship. Certainly, the fatally flawed structuring of the credit counseling industry by the credit card lenders in the 1970’s and the still ongoing dismal efforts of mortgage loan servicers to “help” borrowers in default should have taught us the lessons that those who serve the lender cannot and may not and will not serve the interests of the borrower. Capitalism does not work that way whether the lender is a traditional profit incented financial institution in the case of credit card and mortgage loans or a mix of private and public lenders as in the case of student loans. Think IRS and SBA for other government collector examples. If the notion of inclusive capitalism or Robert Reich’s notion of saved capitalism takes hold, perhaps it will invent a way for this to work, but today such efforts are poisonous because they delay creative solutions and punish borrowers and the American economy both of which desperately need such solutions to thrive. Of course servicing must be improved as much as possible and it is tempting to try to rely on the servicers since they are the ones with contacts with the borrowers, but servicers are collectors by another name. It is well past time to stop putting our faith in the collectors. There is currently no high quality network of financial counselors who can help student loan borrowers at risk.All of us including the Department of Education and the CFPB need to start work immediately to develop that effective network and make certain that this crucial job is not delegated to mediocre providers without sufficient quality or quality controls. More on that in a later post.

Who "Presides" over Chapter 13 Plan Confirmation Hearings?

Temple Law Review will soon publish a volume honoring Bill Whitford, based on a conference from last fall. That event was particularly special for an additional reason: it turned out to be the last opportunity, for many of us, to spend time with another inspiring leader in our field, Jean Braucher. 

My own short contribution, on judicial oversight in chapter 13 bankruptcies, has just been posted here. We will share the word when the entire volume is available - including, I believe, a piece from Jean.

Gavel image courtesy of Shutterstock

Municipal Bankruptcy After Detroit

A new commentary stemming from my draft article Federalism Form and Function in the Detroit Bankruptcy is now posted on the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog. The post frames the current skirmishes over other municipalities' access to chapter 9 at least in part as a referendum on the procedural tools used by the court to supervise the Detroit bankruptcy. For two prior Credit Slips posts on the article, see here and here.

Arrow image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Yep, 800,000 Bankruptcy Filings This Year

My blogging has been light the past few months as we have been working on the eighth edition of what will now be LoPucki, Warren & Lawless, Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach. For you secured transactions teachers out there, we have returned a first set of page proofs and everything looks on track for publication later this year well in advance of the spring semester.

To get back into the blogging swing of things, I go to where else . . . bankruptcy filing data. Back in January, I predicted that total 2015 bankruptcy filings for the U.S. would be "somewhere around 800,000." Revisiting that prediction, the numbers seem right on track to meet it.

Quantifying the Benefits of the Fresh Start

I recently discovered a not-so-new paper that provides a useful answer to a question I've asked before:  Who benefits from consumer bankruptcy, and to what degree? This is a real challenge for policy-making, and well-supported answers are essential to greasing the wheels of reform.

In this paper, Will Dobbie (Princeton) and Jae Song (SSA) use a creative technique, comparing the financial outcomes of Chapter 13 debtors whose plans were--and were not--confirmed to probe the positive effects of access to such relief (apparently whether or not the payment plan is successfully completed). Successful access to Chapter 13 protection led to over $5000 in increased annual earnings in the first ten post-filing years and a 3.5 percentage-point increase in employment over the first five post-filing years, including a nearly 3 percentage-point increase in self employment. Access to relief also reduced the receipt of "welfare" benefits and increased retirement savings contributions.  Most striking, access to debt relief reduced mortality (presumably by decreasing stress) during this period by almost 2 percentage points--which is a 47.5% decrease from the mean for filers whose cases were dismissed, largely attributable to a large, positive effect on filers over 60. The authors attribute these gains to an increased incentive to work and produce earnings and  reduction in economic instability and stress.

The results of this study are among the many individual and societal benefits of consumer bankruptcy commonly identified in legal literature. Indeed, the authors conclude that "individual debt relief is much more likely to be welfare-improving than previously realized"--and these instances of individual welfare redound in direct ways to the state and society as a whole. While I can see a variety of quibbles that empirical scholars might have with this study, the results provide fairly solid support for the most common working theories of relief, and they offer even greater comfort for policymakers searching for reasons to introduce or expand individual debt relief.

Bankruptcy Filings Down Again 10.1% in February 2015

Thanks to Epiq Systems, the latest monthly bankruptcy figures are out, and they show a 10.1% year-over-year decline. We now have had 52 straight months of year-over-year declines in the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate. The graph to the right shows the trend in year-over-year changes.

There was a daily average of 3,422 bankruptcy filings in February, compared to 3,804 from the previous year. Total February bankruptcy filings were just over 65,000. (Daily averages are computed based on business days.)

I forecasted approximately 800,000 bankruptcy filings for the 2015 calendar year, and the first two months of the calendar year suggested we are spot on that forecast. The first few months of the calendar historically see the highest filing rates of the year. January and February usually account for about 15.5% of the annual total, and extrapolating that historical pattern to the 124,052 filings so far in 2015 puts us right at 800.000 for the calendar year.

(For new readers, reasons for the decline are explained in many of my posts collected here.)