Facts: How the study is conducted
The researchers at the University of Gothenburg and Lund have, with the help of information from the Enforcement Officer, randomly contacted young people between the ages of 18 and 25 in Västra Götaland, Skåne and Östergötland.
One difficulty in reaching the people has been that debt is associated with shame. Another is that many in the target audience are reluctant to open mail.
The purpose of the study is partly to investigate the way into a problematic indebtedness, as well as to investigate how it affects young people’s entry into adulthood. The young people must be followed for three years.
Source: Tobias Davidsson, researcher at the University of Gothenburg.
In the subway, mobile, shop or on TV. The offers of quick loans or to pay in installments are everywhere.
You can buy everything from food to luxury bags on credit.
The loan party has been seen in the statistics in recent years. More and more young people are applying for debt restructuring. Liabilities to debt collection companies at the turn of the year were SEK 108 billion, according to Swedish debt collection.
– There is a notion that luxury consumption is behind debt. But often it is really about poverty, says Tobias Davidsson.
He has a doctorate in social work at the University of Gothenburg and is together with colleague Erik Eriksson at Lund University behind the research project Debt Weight – Young Adults and the Dimensions of Debt.
Social problems are behind it
For three years, the researchers follow 18 people between the ages of 18 and 25 who have ended up with the Enforcement Officer. So far, they have conducted a first round of in-depth interviews.
According to Davidsson, the pattern that has emerged in the preliminary results is quite dark.
– We had an opinion in the beginning that this is something that must be understood and handled as a social problem. But we had not really understood how much social problems preceded the debts.
Among the participants, it is about everything from having ended up in depression and not being able to pay the bills to having been manipulated to take out an SMS loan in a violent relationship. Many of the interviewees themselves have stated that they have some form of neuropsychiatric disability, according to Davidsson.
Another picture that comes as a shame in the study is that young people get into debt with expensive unsecured loans because they do not know the terms.
– From a political point of view, it is often said that young people will take out fewer bad loans if they receive more tuition in personal finance at school. But most of the people we talked to say that they knew it was bad to take out this type of loan, says Davidsson.
Even though it is associated with anxiety to take out a loan, there is often an intoxication once the money is visible in the account, he says.
Can start with a pizza
A majority of the interviewees state that it has started with smaller consumer loans. There are a number of companies that offer the option to split the payment or pay on credit even for smaller purchases.
It can be as little as a pizza for SEK 100 in installments.
Once the loan, which at first looked cheap, ended up with a debt collection company, the circus begins.
– Everyone we have talked to describes this time. It dims down debt collection claims from lots of different companies. They sell them back and forth between each other. In the end, you have no idea how it even started. The pizza that you may have bought six months ago has become a requirement of SEK 2,500 from an unknown company, says Davidsson.
He tells of a girl who had a debt of SEK 1.2 million with the Enforcement Officer. She had constantly taken out new loans to redeem the old ones.
– The debt had time to reach 800,000 before it even ended up in debt collection. The debt mountain only increased and interest rates ticked on.
Life becomes meager
When the various companies that offer this type of credit appear with their logos in e-commerce and also in physical stores, according to Davidsson, several of the young people describe that they feel anger and a certain anxiety.
– None of those we spoke to can buy in installments now because they have payment remarks. But they are constantly faced with the message that they can postpone payments.
Getting into debt can go a long way. The slower it is possible to get rid of the debt once it has ended up with the Enforcement Officer. The interviewees tell of a meager life full of shame and difficult social relationships. A girl has given up on meeting a partner.
– She said she can not date. She has no money and sooner or later she has to tell it. Had she been the other person, she would have put her legs on her back immediately.