Mapping personal insolvency: Who Faces Financial Challenges and Where It Happens
What is it about?
This article deals with personal insolvency in Germany. The results presented, and their level of detail is novel, as previously, due to limited data availability for the German and European context, little was known about the demographics and spatial distribution of persons affected by insolvencies. These new insights and statistics were derived by utilizing a large administrative database in combination with web scraping and text-mining techniques. The results and techniques presented here show new opportunities for official statistics.
Why is it important?
A task of national statistical agencies (NSI) is to provide information that is of societal importance. A relevant societal phenomenon is personal insolvency, as in recent decades, there has been a substantial increase in those rates. This article presents an application in the area of personal insolvency that unlocks the full potential of administrative data in combination with data science techniques. Since the use of new data sources and sound data science methodologies are two central points on many research agendas of NSIs, this article demonstrates opportunities for NSIs to develop innovative statistical products that are helpful for policy and social research.