The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [99]
Everyone associated with the project benefited from the continuing support of Alex Warren, who designed and managed the database with great skill. He was always willing to do “just one more run” and always alert to new ways to test our hypotheses. We are grateful for his help.
The bankruptcy judges and trustees made data collection possible. We offer our lasting thanks to the Honorable Keith Lundin, of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, who provided the kind of advice and encouragement that makes empirical work possible, and to his very able assistant Cindy Odle, who did much of the ground work in Tennessee. We are also grateful for the support and cooperation of the chief judges of the districts we studied: the Honorable Steven Felsenthal, the Honorable Bruce Fox, the Honorable Lee Jack-wig, the Honorable Carol Kenner, the Honorable Geraldine Mund, and the Honorable Susan Sonderby. We also appreciate the ready cooperation of the Office of the United States Trustee and the Assistant United States Trustees, the individual bankruptcy trustees, and the bankruptcy clerks of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Philadelphia. We owe them an incalculable debt. Without their generous contributions of time and energy to this project, there would have been no 2001 Consumer Bankruptcy Project.
We owe other debts as well. Eric Keil, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was a patient and resourceful guide through much of the government data, and we offer our thanks. We also thank Margaret Brinig, Brenda Cossman, David Himmelstein, Michael Schill, Teresa Sullivan, Susan Wachter, Brady Williamson, and Steffie Woolhandler for reading and commenting on chapter drafts and suggesting additional data sources. Jean Avnet Morse provided thoughtful advice across a range of topics, making literally hundreds of useful suggestions that have made this a better book. Bruce H. Mann read the entire draft and listened to endless interpretations of the data; he provided wise counsel, gentle advice, and unconditional support, for which we publicly acknowledge our gratitude.
This book reports on original data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, but it also incorporates data from more than three dozen other data sources, both public and private. We were blessed with superb research assistance from Harvard Law School students who added their energy to this project by helping us track down particularly elusive data and by fact checking our findings. Yolanda Rodriquez, Harvard Law ’03, was a thoroughgoing professional, working through citations and locating financial data. James Hart, Harvard Law ’04, also checked references, while he dug into various calculations and engaged in spirited conversations about how best to understand the federal data. Daniel Ebner, Harvard Law ’04, rechecked all the Consumer Bankruptcy Project data runs, assuming the huge task of verifying their accuracy down to the second decimal point. Lea Krivinskas, Harvard Law ’04, tirelessly verified hundreds of facts. Angie Littwin, Harvard Law ’02; Susan Lee, Harvard Law ’02; Amy McNutt, Harvard Law ’04; Nathan Oman, Harvard Law ’03; Michael Roh, Harvard Law ’04; and Daniel Volchok, Harvard Law ’03, also provided important assistance with the research work. Catherine Dick, Harvard Law ’05, was the lifesaver at the end whose creativity, initiative, and old-fashioned spunk helped us locate the last statistics we needed. To Yolanda, James, Dan, Lea, Angie, Sue, Amy, Nate, Mike, Dan, and Cassie—we say thank you for your hard work, your good brains, and