Negative home equity, economic insecurity, and household mobility over the Great Recession

2016 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Bricker ◽  
Brian Bucks
10.28945/3947 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 001-019

What triggered the crash of the U.S. housing market? This analysis looks at the economic and industry forces that led to an economic downturn that put as many as half of all U.S. residential builders out of business. Since the Great Depression, the U.S. housing market has significantly influenced economic production and employment levels. Direct and indirect investments in the housing industry, along with the induced economic activities such as real estate transactions and construction as well as other factors, accounted for an estimated 15-20% of GDP during boom years (CBPP, 2012). The burst of the $8 trillion housing bubble in 2007 and the subsequent collapse of the financial markets in 2008 created massive disarray in homebuilding (Bivens, 2011). As many as 50% of homebuilders closed their doors, either voluntarily or through bankruptcy filings (Quint, 2015). Concurrently, from 2006 through 2012, the Great Recession resulted in the loss of over $7 trillion of home equity (Gould Ellen, 2012). Over 24 percent of home mortgages went “underwater” with balances exceeding home values (Carter & Gottschalck, n.d.). For some homeowners, the unfortunate thought of losing their homes through foreclosure and incurring disruption to family life became a reality. The stress from threats of the loss of a home, unemployment, and depletion of savings exacted a great toll on many. Not since the Great Depression has the U.S. economy faced forces so devastating to the housing market and personal wealth.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya Demyanyk ◽  
Dmytro Hryshko ◽  
María Jose Luengo-Prado ◽  
Bent E. Sørensen

We use individual-level credit reports merged with loan-level mortgage data to estimate how home equity interacted with mobility in relatively weak and strong labor markets in the United States during the Great Recession. We construct a dynamic model of housing, consumption, employment, and relocation, which provides a structural interpretation of our empirical results and allows us to explore the role that foreclosure played in labor mobility. We find that negative home equity is not a significant barrier to job-related mobility because the benefits of accepting an out-of-area job outweigh the costs of moving. This pattern holds even if homeowners are not able to default on their mortgages. (JEL D14, G01, J61, R23, R31)


Author(s):  
Jacqueline Elizabeth Johnson

Since the e-commerce site’s launch in 2005, Etsy has branded itself as a platform for individuals to buy and sell unique, handmade, and vintage items. This project is interested in questions about gender, race, labor, and platforms and seeks to examine how Etsy articulates new formations of raced and gendered labor directly tied to The Great Recession. While scholars have analyzed Etsy’s relationship to historic craft movements (Krugh 2014; Luckman 2013) and to fan handicrafting (Cherry 2016), there is still relatively little published research on the platform. Situating Etsy within the literature on postfeminism and media culture (Gill 2007; McRobbie 2004), gender and passionate work (Duffy 2016; Duffy 2017; McRobbie 2018), and race and digital hustle economies (McMillan Cottom 2020), I analyze products sold on Etsy that rhetorically engage gendered labor dynamics and precarity through the language of hustling or entrepreneurship in ways that center white femininities. Utilizing a cultural studies framing and critical discourse and textual analysis, I identify three main threads: 1) White women on the platform have co-opted Black vernacular to address how economic insecurity has pushed them into gig labor 2) These products romanticize precarity by positioning feminized grit and individualized solutions to macro economic hurdles as female empowerment 3) The products discursively frame entrepreneurship as aspirational, liberatory, and, most centrally, compatible with white, domestic femininities. While hustling, and its new, white appearance, is celebrated on Etsy, we must be mindful of how hustling is always raced, gendered, and precarious.


Author(s):  
Janice Berry-Edwards

Economic insecurity and family Well-Being is a growing concern for American society. With the dramatic changes that occurred following the “great recession” of 2008, and the lingering effects since, families have experienced stressors and multiple strains in their adjustment to the impact of the changing fiscal climate and their financial demands. To understand the experience of economic insecurity, an understanding of economic security is helpful in providing a context for how these two dynamics emanate and impact families and their Well-Being. This article provides a glimpse of how the fragility of the economy and the mental tax experienced by the family are inextricably interdependent and connected.


Populism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Giurlando

Abstract This paper argues that the “feeling of betrayal” thoroughly entangles feeling and narration into a single subjective impression. When felt by large numbers of citizens in the political realm, it motivates the desire to reassert national control over a realm where such control is perceived to have been lost. Expressions of “feeling betrayed” can be observed in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the consequent populist insurgencies impacting many Western countries, suggesting links between economic insecurity, feelings of betrayal, and the willingness to support non-mainstream political movements which demand a reassertion of national control. The paper attempts to demonstrate these links by analyzing Italy and Greece, two countries which saw a surge in support for populist groups after the Eurozone’s debt crisis.


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