Consumer Law

Deborah Thorne and Katherine Porter Paper on Financial Education for Bankrupt Families

By Jeff Sovern

Deborah Thorne of Ohio University's Department of Sociology and Katherine Porter of Iowa have co-authored Financial Education for Bankrupt Families: Attitudes and Needs, 24 Journal of Consumer Education 15 (2007).  Here's the abstract:

This paper examines bankrupt families' attitudes toward, and need for, financial education. The data are derived from a longitudinal study of families who filed for personal bankruptcy. We examine the implications of bankrupt debtors' attitudes and experiences for the content and delivery of bankruptcy financial education, which in 2005 was made a prerequisite to consumer debtors' eligibility for discharge of their debts. We report the degree to which bankrupt families believed a financial education course would have helped them avoid bankruptcy and describe how these attitudes vary by demographic characteristics. We examine key financial difficulties that families face after bankruptcy and highlight ways in which bankruptcy financial education could be responsive to the realities of families' lives after they file bankruptcy.

You can download the paper at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1032968.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).