- relative to older borrowers has played a major role in easing the debt repayment burden in the presence of large income shocks …. Notwithstanding historically low interest rates, we show that income shocks are the main factor contributing to mortgage repayment …

We analyse the effect of shocks to housing wealth and income before and after the Great Recession. We combine datasets … containing information on expenditure, income, wealth and debt in a synthetic panel to understand how household indebtedness … affects the response to income and wealth shocks.We find evidence for both a housing wealth effect and income shocks …