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National Bankruptcy Research Center September 2012 Bankruptcy Filings Report


After an unseasonal upturn in August, bankruptcy filings in September dropped by more than 10% (from 102,000 in August to 90,000 in September), essentially returning to the level of July filings. The continuing dropoff from 2011 filings is evident from any generalization: filings in September were down 17% from last September, filings in the third quarter of this year were down 16% from the third quarter of last year, and filings for this year to date are down 14% from the first nine months of last year.

Nationwide, there have been about 3800 filings per million adults so for this year, one for every 260 adults. Four states stand out with by far the highest filing rates: Tennessee and Georgia in the Southeast and Nevada and Utah in the Southwest, all about 70% above the national average, at more than 6500 filings per million adults. At the other side of the spectrum, seven States have filings less than half the national average, led by Alaska, with only 1100 filings/million adults, and followed by the District of Columbia, North Dakota, Vermont, South Carolina, and Hawaii, and Texas.

At the more granular level of county data, there is a strikingly dense pattern of high filings in Georgia and Tennessee, reflecting the presence in those States of nine of the ten highest-filing counties in the Nation. By far the highest filing county this year is Shelby County, Tennessee (Memphis), with a rate of more than 14,000 filings per million adults (more than three-and-a-half times the national average). The only other metropolitan area with a filing rate nearly so far above the norm (and the only county among the top-filing counties outside the Deep South) is Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with more than 10,000 filings per million adults. At the other side of the spectrum, about 70 counties have no filings at all this year, the largest of which is the Bethel Census Area in Alaska.

There is also considerable disparity in the rate at which overall filing rates are dropping. Every State has fewer filings this year than at the same time last year. But the steepest falls are in the Pacific Southwest: the four States with the largest dropoff are Nevada, Hawaii, Arizona, and California, all down by more than 23% from last year at this time. Nevada’s appearance as the State with the third highest filing rate (mentioned above) and at the same time by the biggest dropoff from last year underscores the startlingly high level of filings in Nevada during the crisis. The association with the mortgage crisis is documented by the particularly steep decline in Chapter 13 filings – down 39% in Nevada this year.

This analysis was performed on data collected by the National Bankruptcy Research Center (NBKRC) by NBKRC contributor Professor Ronald Mann of the Columbia Law School.