National Bankruptcy Research Center September 2012 Bankruptcy Filings Report
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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.
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