As We Forgive Our Debtors

Bankruptcy in America is a booming business. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans each year have joined giant corporations, like Johns Manville and Continental Airlines, and once-wealthy individuals, like John Connally, in filing for bankruptcy. Is this dramatic growth a result of mushrooming debt--consumer debt and consumer bankruptcy have both more than doubled since the late 1970s--or does it reflect a moreal decline that permits the middle class to evade their debts? As We Forgive Our Debtors addresses these questions with the data gathered in the largest empirical study of consumer bankruptcy ever done in this country. The authors of this mulit-disciplinary study describe the law and the statistics in clear, nontechnical language, combining a thorough statistical description of the social and economic position of consumer bankrupts with human portraits of the debtors and creditors whose journey has ended in bankruptcy court.