Bankrupt Households and Economic Crisis. Evidence from the Greek Courts

This paper investigates the profile of the Greek bankrupt households and is the first to deal with the bankrupt households in Greece utilizing court data from the judicial decisions according to the newly established personal Bankruptcy Law 3869/2010. We compare the characteristics of the bankrupt households drawn from the court data with those of a control group of households without financial difficulties constructed from the EU-SILC database. Our findings indicate that income and/or job loss, family breakup, and women with children are important characteristics related to bankruptcy. We also find that although the median of the household disposable income of the bankrupt households is lower than that of the households without financial difficulties, the former do not fall below the poverty line at a greater rate than the latter, in all household size instances. This finding is in line with the results of earlier studies indicating that bankruptcy is not a poor household’s issue. The results are confirmed using logistic regression relating the probability of bankruptcy to a set of socioeconomic measures.