IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cgs/wpaper/123.html

Household Debt Burden and Union Jobs: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Po Yin Wong

    (Queen Mary University of London)

  • Giorgos Gouzoulis

    (Queen Mary University of London)

  • Giorgos Galanis

    (Queen Mary University of London and London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

This paper investigates the causal effect of household indebtedness on unionization in the United States, drawing on longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1994–2021) and exploiting exogenous variation from the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). Using this policy-induced variation in the cost of repaying debt as an instrument, we find that higher household debt significantly lowers the likelihood of unionized employment, with the effect concentrated in states with right-to-work (RTW) laws. We interpret this result through the lens of institutional labour market frictions. In states with right-to-work laws where agreements requiring all workers to join the union or pay union dues are prohibited, financially constrained workers avoid unionising since this might involve higher conflict, instability, or employer pushback. The findings connect household financial vulnerability to collective-bargaining institutions, highlighting how personal balance sheets and legal regimes jointly shape labour-market behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Po Yin Wong & Giorgos Gouzoulis & Giorgos Galanis, 2026. "Household Debt Burden and Union Jobs: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in the United States," Working Papers 123, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:cgs:wpaper:123
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://cgr.sbm.qmul.ac.uk/CGRWP123.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cgs:wpaper:123. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Pedro S. Martins (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgqmwuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.