An Ohio University assistant professor of sociology recently published a report noting a shift in bankruptcy filings toward the elderly.

Deborah Thorne has been researching bankruptcy for about 10 years, making it the focus of her dissertation from Washington State University, and studying it further when working toward a post doctoral degree at Harvard Law.

Her current work involves the consumer bankruptcy study, a research report of statistics regarding bankruptcy that began in 1981 and is published about every 10 years. During the most recent data collection in 2007, Thorne and other researchers discovered that the bell curve of bankruptcy is starting to shift. "The rates for older people have absolutely skyrocketed," Thorne said.

Thorne said she believes that the two main factors that are causing more senior citizens to file bankruptcy are medical bills and confusing mortgage and credit card agreements. Thorne added that credit card fine print is either too hard for older Americans to understand or they just can't believe anything would be that unethical.

"When I talk to my students about credit cards, they're learning to be very jaded and very distrusting, as well they should be," Thorne said, explaining that older Americans are more trusting, assuming that credit card agencies have their best interest in mind.

Medical costs are also rising, as Thorne recalls from a report she saw in Barron's Magazine stating a couple who retires at 65 will face $225,000 in out-of-pocket medical bills.

The report also found that the influence of baby boomers on bankruptcy has begun to wear off and, in what Thorne calls the "silver lining," younger people's rates are starting to drop.

"It may be that they just don't have the money to file (for bankruptcy), maybe their parents are helping them out," Thorne said. "Our guess is they still have as much debt as they had before, (but) they're just postponing it."

Thorne said that as the economy continues to get worse and prices increase categorically, many more people will file for bankruptcy.

"I would expect the numbers are going to go up, up, up," Thorne said. "They're not going to come down - they're going to go through the roof."

Thorne and her associates from Harvard Law and the University of Michigan plan to collect data and issue another report around 2010.