br Acknowledgements This work was

Acknowledgements This work was supported by NIH grants 1R01MD006064 and 1R21HD066312 (Dr. Osypuk, PI), and the Minnesota Population Center grant P2C HD041023. Funders did not have any role in design or conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had no role in the analysis or the preparation of this manuscript. HUD reviewed the manuscript to ensure respondent confidentiality was maintained in the presentation of results. We presented preliminary results from this manuscript at the Population Association of America (PAA) April 2015 meeting. We thank Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen for his contributions and comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Introduction During the last decades of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first, the scope of social welfare programs for financially distressed middle-class and near-poverty households have been on the decline. This is the same boldenone undecylenate in which wealth inequality increased and low-income and middle-class American households experienced some of the largest debt gains in recent history (Pfeffer, Danziger, & Schoeni, 2013; Sullivan, Warren, & Westbrook, 2000). Recent work suggests that the manifestation of poor socioeconomic status and economic disadvantages in midlife is increasingly tied to declines in female life expectancy (Montez & Zajacova 2014). It is therefore important to understand whether programs to improve one\'s economic status are beneficial as they may have unintended consequences for their overall well being. Consumer bankruptcy is one of the few social safety nets that offers consumer debt relief (Feibelman, 2005; Sullivan, Warren, & Westbrook, 1999). Bankruptcy is not a rare event. As of 2015 individual non-business or consumer bankruptcy filings totaled approximately 850,000, with one in eight Americans likely to file for bankruptcy during their lifetime (Gerardo & Flynn 2016). Since the late 1970s consumer bankruptcy rates steadily increased surpassing 1 million during the 1990s and peaking just after the Great Recession in 2010 (Tabb, 2006). During that same period both the female single and joint filer bankrupt population surpassed male filers (Sullivan, Warren, & Westbrook, 2000) with families composed of unmarried women with children at greatest risk for declaring (Warren, 2001). Their filing status is often tied to marital status, with single women and women in single income households overrepresented within the consumer bankruptcy population (Sullivan, Warren, & Westbrook, 1999; Warren, 2002). Large shares of those who declare due to changes in family structure are women (Caputo 2008), usually after a divorce or marital separation (Fisher & Lyons, 2006). This is not surprising, given women (and women with children) are more likely to be at risk of poverty and wealth loss related to marital disruption (Addo & Lichter 2013; Holden & Smock, 1991). Despite research indicating that women might be disproportionately affected by bankruptcy-related outcomes, studies tend to group men and women together. Declaring bankruptcy can be costly—both in the short run, with upfront fees to file, additional court fees, and attorney bills (Porter, 2012), and in the long run, either from wage garnishment, lower earnings, or as a marks on one\'s credit record that makes future borrowing expensive because of high interest rates (Athreya, 2001; Han & Li, 2011; Maroto, 2012). On the other hand, debt-related financial hardships decrease the availability of resources, reduce the ability to accumulate savings, have been associated with increased perceptions of stress, and may preclude future access to adequate healthcare, all of which can negatively manifest in an women\'s health and wellbeing (Bridges & Disney, 2010; Kalousova & Burgard, 2013, 2014: Lyons & Yilmazer, 2005). Therefore, the marginal effect of declaring, apart from debt, on one\'s health is an empirical question, one that I aim to answer in this paper.