According to the BBC, a new report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC) found that individuals under 30 accounted for 15% of all personal bankruptcies in 2003-2004. That figure was almost double that of the 2001-2002 level.
The study also found that young women are more likely to declare themselves bankrupt. Though men outnumber in women in the number of bankruptcies by nearly 2 to 1, the PWC study found that the number of women in irreversible financial difficulty rose more than 45% over the last two years.
The main culprits? Expensive college educations, overuse of credit cards, and rising interest rates. As a seemingly professional academic, I know the feeling. (sigh). But debt is one area where I definitely *don’t* want the ladies catching with the men…
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I have to agree that I wish women were not catching up with men in this area. But with tuition costs on the rise and more and more women not only going to college but to graduate schools, we are on our way to catching up. After all, women have made up more than 55% of entrants into law schools over the past 3 years. (Read this statistic, but cannot remember where, so feel free to correct.)
The bigger issue is the increase of the cost of an education for both men adn women, particularly the middle and lower class. As the first in my family to graduate from college, I have put myself through a private college and 2 (soon to be 3) years of law school by getting scholarships and student loans. My parents are upper middle class, so I was never eligible for free money. Even the people I do know that qualify for free money (other than schoalrships) never receive enough money to cover the entire cost of tuition and books.
Now the government is raising interest rates to almost double the current rates on all federal student loans (staffords and PLUS) July 1. This, in addition to other recent events since a certain party has been in power, have lead me to believe that there is a concerted effort to keep the rich rich and stop the kids of the middle and lower classes from having such easier access to the education system that the rich, for so long, were able to control. Remember that the Stafford loans, for which almost every student is eligible, have not been around all that long, and there are rumors that certain members of Congress would like to do away with them all together.
I in no way mean to imply that all people with money are trying to keep those without down. But I do not think anyone can deny that there are certain people who do just that.