Fresh Loaf

Georgia’s personal bankruptcy rate is roughly four times higher than neighboring South Carolina’s.

Are Georgians really four-times as unable to pay their debts as South Carolinians?

Nope. It turns out laws allowing creditors to garnish the wages of debtors have much higher rates bankruptcy than states that protect wages from creditors.

So spoketh the AP:

[T]he five states that prohibit or strongly limit wage seizures — North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Florida and Texas — all have drastically lower rates than their neighbors, with particularly striking differences along borders, where economic conditions are similar but bankruptcy rates are not.

South Carolina’s bankruptcy rate is almost one-quarter that of Georgia’s; Pennsylvania has half the rate of Ohio; North Carolina has about one-third the rate of Tennessee; Texas has a smaller rate than all its neighbors; and Florida has just about half the rates of Georgia and Alabama.

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Our friends at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute pointed us toward a couple of depressing reports today from the U.S. Census Bureau.

One said Georgia’s poverty rate was a lot higher in 2007 even than it was in the depths of the 2001 recession. Not only that, but middle-class Georgians haven’t gained any economic ground since the recession.

The other report said more people in the state now don’t have health insurance.

“Even after six years of economic recovery, Georgians have not regained the ground lost in the 2001 recession,” GBPI Deputy Director Sarah Beth Gehl said in a statement. “With the weakening of the economy in 2008, things are likely to get worse before they get better.” (more…)

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