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Economic Commentary

Home Equity Lines: Characteristics and Consequences

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Three traditional indicators of consumer financial distress have sent up warning flags in the past year. The rapid growth of consumer installment debt relative to that of disposable personal income pushed the debt-to-income ratio to new highs in 1986; delinquency rates on installment and mortgage debt continued to increase last year; and personal bankruptcies grew about 30 percent to reach a record high.

06.01.1987ISSN 2163-3738 EC 6/1/1987

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Kowalewski, Kim J. 1987. “Home Equity Lines: Characteristics and Consequences.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 6/1/1987.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International