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Do we know what we owe? A comparison of borrower- and lender-reported consumer debt

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Abstract

Household surveys are the source of some of the most widely studied data on consumer balance sheets, with the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) generally cited as the leading source of wealth data for the United States. At the same time, recent research questions survey respondents? propensity and ability to report debt characteristics accurately. We compare household debt as reported by borrowers to the SCF with household debt as reported by lenders to Equifax using the new FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel (CCP). Moments of the borrower and lender debt distributions are compared by year, age of household head, household size, and region of the country, in total and across five standard debt categories. Our central finding is that the SCF and CCP debt patterns are strikingly similar. There are, however, two noteworthy exceptions: The aggregate credit card debt implied by SCF borrowers? reports is estimated to be between 60 and 63 percent of that implied by CCP lenders? reports, and the aggregate student debt implied by the SCF is roughly 75 percent of that implied by the CCP. Despite the credit card debt mismatch, bankruptcy history is reported comparably in the borrower and lender sources, indicating that not all stigmatized consumer behaviors are underreported.

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  • Meta Brown & Andrew F. Haughwout & Donghoon Lee & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2011. "Do we know what we owe? A comparison of borrower- and lender-reported consumer debt," Staff Reports 523, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:523
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    Cited by:

    1. Lance Lochner & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2014. "Student Loans and Repayment: Theory, Evidence and Policy," Working Papers 2014-40, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    2. Whitaker, Stephan D., 2018. "Big Data versus a survey," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 285-296.
    3. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Marianna Kudlyak & John Mondragon & Olivier Coibion, 2014. "Does Greater Inequality Lead to More Household Borrowing? New Evidence from Household Data," 2014 Meeting Papers 402, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Yvonne McCarthy & Kieran McQuinn, 2016. "Attenuation Bias, Recall Error and the Housing Wealth Effect," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 492-517, August.
    5. Julapa Jagtiani & Wenli Li, 2014. "Credit access after consumer bankruptcy filing: new evidence," Working Papers 14-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    6. Zachary Bleemer & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2017. "Disaster (over-)insurance: the long-term financial and socioeconomic consequences of Hurricane Katrina," Staff Reports 807, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    7. Meta Brown & John Grigsby & Wilbert van der Klaauw & Jaya Wen & Basit Zafar, 2016. "Financial Education and the Debt Behavior of the Young," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(9), pages 2490-2522.
    8. Alice M. Henriques & Joanne W. Hsu, 2014. "Analysis of Wealth Using Micro- and Macrodata: A Comparison of the Survey of Consumer Finances and Flow of Funds Accounts," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress, pages 245-274, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Jacob Krimmel & Kevin B. Moore & John Edward Sabelhaus & Paul A. Smith, 2013. "The current state of U.S. household balance sheets," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Sep, pages 337-359.
    10. Zachary Bleemer & Meta Brown & Donghoon Lee & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2014. "Tuition, jobs, or housing: what's keeping millennials at home?," Staff Reports 700, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    consumer debts; measurement;

    JEL classification:

    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

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