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Tracking and stress-testing U.S. household leverage

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Abstract
Borrowers? housing equity is an important component of their wealth and a critical determinant of their vulnerability to shocks. In this paper, we create a unique data set that enables us to provide a comprehensive look at the ratio of housing debt to housing values?what we refer to as household leverage?at the micro level. An advantage of our data is that we are able to study the evolution of household leverage over time and locations in the United States. We find that leverage was at a very low point just prior to the large declines in house prices that began in 2006, and rose very quickly thereafter, despite reductions in housing debt. As of early 2016, leverage statistics are approaching their pre-crisis levels, as house prices have risen more than 30 percent nationally since 2012. We use our borrower-level leverage measures and another unique feature of our data?updated borrower credit scores?to conduct ?stress tests?: projecting leverage and defaults under various adverse house price scenarios. We find that while the riskiness of the household sector has declined significantly since 2012, it remains vulnerable to very severe house price declines.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Fuster & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Andrew F. Haughwout, 2016. "Tracking and stress-testing U.S. household leverage," Staff Reports 787, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:787
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Assessing Housing Risk
      by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets on 2018-10-15 11:28:50

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    Cited by:

    1. Alina K. Bartscher & Moritz Kuhn & Moritz Schularick & Ulrike I. Steins, 2020. "Modigliani Meets Minsky: Inequality, Debt, and Financial Fragility in America, 1950-2016," Staff Reports 924, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Martin Beraja & Andreas Fuster & Erik Hurst & Joseph Vavra, 2017. "Regional Heterogeneity and Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 23270, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Bruno Albuquerque, 2019. "One Size Fits All? Monetary Policy and Asymmetric Household Debt Cycles in U.S. States," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(5), pages 1309-1353, August.
    4. Martin Beraja & Andreas Fuster & Erik Hurst & Joseph Vavra, 2019. "Regional Heterogeneity and the Refinancing Channel of Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 109-183.
    5. Jesse Bricker & Kevin B. Moore & Jeffrey P. Thompson, 2019. "Trends in household portfolio composition," Working Papers 19-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    6. Alina K. Bartscher & Moritz Kuhn & Moritz Schularick & Ulrike I. Steins, 2020. "The Distribution of Household Debt in the United States, 1950-2019," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 015, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    7. Neil Bhutta & Jesse Bricker & Lisa J. Dettling & Jimmy Kelliher & Steven Laufer, 2019. "Stress Testing Household Debt," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-008, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    stress testing; leverage; mortgages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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