middle-aged, middle class swell bankruptcy court dockets....

[mike_c]

http://money.tbo.com/money/MGBGAIV7LXD.html

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Since the 1960s, personal bankruptcy has often been a haven for the young and struggling. Bankruptcy lawyers say younger and less-educated people tended to rack up too much debt while starting families and jobs, without a savings cushion to carry them through lean times. No government agency tracks the age of bankruptcy filers, but the rule of thumb, say those who have worked in and studied the field, was the older the group, the fewer the filers.

That's changing, as personal bankruptcy filings are hitting all-time highs. Last year, there were more than 1.6 million such filings, compared with 875,000 a decade earlier. Some experts say much of the increase is being driven by older people, many of whom have decades of work experience in white-collar jobs.

The Consumer Bankruptcy Project, which surveyed 2,400 bankruptcy filers in 2001 and 1991, found that on a per capita basis, older people are now the most likely to file. In 2001, for instance, per capita filings of individuals ages 45 to 54 increased 58 percent, to 11 per thousand, according to the study.

<snip>

on edit--

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/opinion/09herbert.html

Despite the rosy rhetoric that comes nonstop from the administration, millions upon millions of American families, including many that consider themselves solidly in the middle class, are in deep economic trouble. Friday's Wall Street Journal featured a page-one article with the ominous headline: "New Group Swells Bankruptcy Court: The Middle-Aged."

Personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are at an all-time high. The Journal story focused on "an emerging class of middle-age, white-collar Americans who make the grim odyssey from comfortable circumstances to going broke." Among the villains of this disturbing piece are the unstable job market and staggering amounts of personal debt.

It's getting harder and harder to close our eyes to the growing economic devastation. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and co-author of "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke," wrote in 2003:

"This year, more people will end up bankrupt than will suffer a heart attack. More adults will file for bankruptcy than will be diagnosed with cancer. More people will file for bankruptcy than will graduate from college. And, in an era when traditionalists decry the demise of the institution of marriage, Americans will file more petitions for bankruptcy than for divorce."

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[amazona]

1. it's because of health care

You get laid off and there's a good chance you'll never get hired again at another job that offers health insurance, no one wants you on your plan. Yet you're in the age group where private health insurance is impossible to buy in some states. Once you get sick, you lose everything. You are charged from twice to nine times what a person with an insurance contract is charged for the same care or for less care.

[mike_c]

2. got a letter from my insurance company last week....

Beginning Jan 1 I must order all prescription drugs from an approved online supplier. Co-payments will double for prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies (to $75 each per 30-day supply for several of the meds I take). I've dealt with the same family owned pharmacy for several years. This sucks.

[jbutsz]

3. "Cash Advance"

Here in middle LA & MS, "cash advance" (on paychecks) shops are sprawling up faster than any other business, including Walmarts; they're everywhere, and they are thriving. Pawn shops, often the last resort for the "working poor," are partitioning their shops to install these paycheck advance services.

Greater numbers of people are unable to make it until payday here, only a few (unpaid) sickdays away from bankruptcy.

[jwirr]

4. It takes only a small change in life

to upset our credit card style of living. When you reach middle age or when the middle class begins to feel the squeeze they file for bankruptcy. There is also another form of "bankruptcy" that is used by the poorer segment of our society. They cannot pay their bills and just end up letting them go. They are not deadbeats but people who should never been given credit in large amounts in the first place. Finally the creditors get tired of trying to collect or find out that fixed incomes from the government are protected or below minimum wage earnings are untouchable and they give up. I wonder how many thousands of these kind of bankruptcies have occurred in the Bushies reign? The "Hoover depression" could look a lot like today if we knew that answer.