*As passed by the House of Representatives on June 10, 1998.

*E&Y allows debtors to retire pre-petition car debt only—no allowance for replacing during plan.

**C&W allow debtors to retire debt and, if that is less than 60-month IRS CFS allowance, use balance to repair/replace vehicle.

*Includes mobile homeowners.

*Includes mobile homeowners.

*Includes mobile homeowners.

Source: American Bankruptcy Institute.

*Seven districts were the Northern District of California, the District of Colorado, the Northern District of Georgia, the District of Massachusetts, the District of Nebraska, the Middle District of North Carolina and the Western District of Wisconsin. The selection of these districts were at authors' discretion presumably reflecting a mix of urban and rural areas as well as the spectrum of high and low cost-of-living areas. No consideration was given for the differences in legal practices governing bankruptcies. White (1998) shows that there exist substantial differences in the high-asset debtor's incentive to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcies across the states.

**The number of Chapter 7 filers impacted in 1998 represents total Chapter 7 bankruptcy petitions filed in 1998 (1 million) multiplied by the percentage of Chapter 7 filers impacted by the means-testing as implied by the study.

***Estimated total debts held by Chapter 7 filers impacted in 1998 were derived using the adjusted weighted average debt per filer estimated by WEFA Group ($74,650).

¹Homestead exemption assumes debtor is head of household. Exemption does not include any exemption for property held as a tenancy by the entirety against debts owed by only one spouse.

²General exemption is an exemption applicable to any type of personal property.

³Major categories exemptions are exemptions for household furnishings, clothing, and other major categories of personal property.

⁴Retirement accounts are exemption for individual retirement and pension accounts.

⁵Wildcard exemption is applicable to any property of the debtor, including property that would be nonexempt otherwise.

⁶Exemption of all household furnishings, clothes, and other goods, provided debtor's interest in each item does not exceed $200.

⁷Plus $750 per dependent, not to exceed a total of $3,000.

⁸Exempt to extent necessary for support of debtor and dependents.

*If law gives exemption to extend of debtor's interest, this table assumes that the exemption may be doubled when husband and wife file jointly.

Source: American Bankruptcy Institute and U.S. Census Bureau

*Seven cases were not included in the final sample because of high total debt level (over $1 million).

Note: The first stage and second stage samples were obtained as described in the text. The second

Note: The columns are derived as discussed in the text and related footnotes. The information shown for 11 circuits includes only courts in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. For display purposes, the District of Columbia has been combined with the Fourth Circuit. For this table, the First Circuit consists of the states ME, MA,NH, and RI; the Second Circuit CT, NY, and VT; the Third Circuit DE, NJ, and PA; the Fourth Circuit Washington DC, MD, NC, SC, VA, and WV; the Fifth Circuit LA, MS, and TX; the Sixth Circuit KY, MI, OH, and TN; the Seventh Circuit IL, IN, and WI; the Eighth Circuit AR, IA, MN, MO, NE, ND, and SD; the Ninth Circuit AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, MT, NV, OR, and WA; the Tenth Circuit CO, KS, NM, OK, UT, and WY; the Eleventh Circuit AL, FL, and GA.

Note: Repayment rates from the 1997 Visa national bankruptcy database were calculated on the basis of: petitioners' reported income; a combination of petitioners' reported expenses and IRS allowances as proposed under H.R. 833; and priority and secured debt payments. See assumptions in text, and repayment methodology described in Section 4.

¹Chapter 7 filers are likely impacted by H.R. 833's needs-based bankruptcy provision if they have: income greater than the national median for families of comparable size and can repay either $5,000 or 25 percent of their unsecured non-priority debts within 5 years, after making secured and priority debt payments and paying for living expenses. The 1996 national median income data by family size were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of the Census for families with more than two members (1997a) and for families of one (1997b).

²Repayment of secured debt is shown over 60 months. For housing debt, repayment is taken as stated by the petitioner unless the outstanding balance would have been paid off in less than 60 months. All other non-housing secured and priority debt is amortized over 60 months. In practice, petitioners may continue to repay outstanding secured debts beyond the 60 month repayment plan, which would increase the share of secured and total debt repaid.

See footnotes to Table 3.

Totals may not add up due to rounding.