People, from all walks of life, file for bankruptcy or a proposal. In my practice I have had teachers, carpenters, plumbers, housewives, doctors, nurses, lawyers, accountants, university professors, actors, labourers, airline pilots, truck drivers, students, airline stewards, mill workers, and more all file for bankruptcy or a proposal. No one is immune from a financial disaster!
The latest study available, published in 1998, called An Empirical Study of Canadians Seeking Personal Bankruptcy Protection by Saul Schwartz & Leigh Anderson of the School of Public Administration, Carleton University, reported the following demographics about their sample of people filing for bankruptcy:
• 59 percent were men
• 32 percent were under 30
• For 28 per cent of the people under 30, student loans were 50 per cent or more of the overall debt
• 43 percent were married (or living in a common law arrangement)
• 29 percent were formerly married
• 28 percent were single
• 15 percent were unmarried and had at least one dependent under 21 years old (this group is 10 percent of the general Canadian population)
• Slightly better educated than the general Canadian population
• For 10 percent, student loans were more than 90 per cent of total debt
• The only difference between the immigrants in our sample and the immigrants in the general population is the under-representation of Asians among the debtors.
