Stephanie Moulton

The Ohio State University | OSU · John Glenn School of Public Affairs

Objective The medical diagnosis of a disease is common in older age and can carry significant financial costs. For many older adults, equity in a home is their primary component of wealth; however, housing wealth is illiquid. We analyze the relationship between the liquidation of housing wealth through mortgage borrowing on older homeowners’ abilit...

The relationship between wealth and health is an important yet complex topic for health research. While prior studies document the importance of wealth for healthy aging, the understanding of the mechanisms through which wealth supports health consumption is limited. We investigate the wealth-to-health link by explicitly modeling the effect of liqu...

This study documents the credit outcomes of older adults immediately before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. On average, older adults experienced larger reductions in total household debt relative to younger adults. However, there is significant heterogeneity, where older adults with higher incomes experienced the...

Notwithstanding the terrible price the world has paid in the Coronavirus pandemic, the fact remains that longevity at older ages is likely to continue to rise in the medium and longer term. This volume explores how the private and public sectors can collaborate via public-private partnerships (PPPs) to develop new mechanisms to reduce older people’...

Economic crises like the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic prompt government intervention to stabilize homeowners and housing markets. During the Great Recession, the primary intervention was permanent loan modifications, with mixed evidence of success. The COVID pandemic spurred a more targeted but temporary intervention—mortgage payment reli...

Housing wealth is the main source of wealth for many older adults. Using the Health and Retirement Study, we assess the impact of new mortgage borrowing on food insecurity among homeowners aged 65 and older. We find a substantial short-term effect, with each additional $10,000 borrowed, lowering food insecurity by 2.2 percentage points. In a simula...

A large number of U.S. adults claim Social Security benefits at age 62, substantially earlier than the government specified full retirement age. One implication of an early claim is a reduction in the amount of future monthly benefits. The literature on the timing of Social Security claiming has developed numerous hypotheses to explain this behavio...

Objectives Financial debt held by older adults in the U.S. has grown over the past two decades. This study examines the extent to which credit cards, other consumer debts, and mortgage debt increase financial stress. Outcome measures of financial stress include the material domain (“bill-paying difficulty”) and psychological domain (“ongoing financ...

Objectives: This study examines the relationship of debt stress and reverse mortgage borrowing and compares it to stress from standard mortgages and consumer debt. Debt stress is measured as a self-reported response to the amount of debt. Method: Using a unique national data set of 1,026 homeowners who chose whether to obtain a reverse mortgage...

This study examines how the extraction of home equity through the federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) affects the credit outcomes of older adults. We use data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, supplemented with a unique credit panel dataset of reverse mortgage borrowers. Using matched samp...

Using unique data on reverse mortgage borrowers in the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program, we semiparametrically estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of borrower behavior. Our estimator is based on a new identification result we develop for models with multiple terminating actions. We show that the per‐period utility functions and d...

Nonprofit credit counseling provides consumers with financial education, individualized financial counseling, and debt restructuring. Despite potential benefits, relatively little is known about its efficacy. This study uses administrative data to assess the relationship between counseling and consumer credit outcomes. We estimate difference‐in‐dif...

Objectives: Reverse mortgages allow adults aged 62 and older to borrow against the equity in their homes without incurring monthly loan repayments. This study examines the relationship of reverse mortgage borrowing with older adults' satisfaction with their financial situation, housing, health, and daily life/leisure as well as with life as a whol...

Purpose This paper links the literatures on the life-cycle hypothesis, homeownership, home equity and pensions. Empirically, the focus is on the EU and USA. The paper aims to explore the extent that seniors extract their home equity and discuss the financial instruments available for equity extraction. Design/methodology/approach The study uses da...

Using a unique dataset of more than 14,000 senior homeowners in the U.S., this study compares self-assessed home values to arm's length contemporaneous appraisals. In a sample of seniors who received counseling for a reverse mortgage, the absolute value of the assessment error averages 18.9 percent of appraised value and it is biased upwards by 13....

Increased pressure for evidence-based practices in policymaking and administration has led to the growth of a new research stream of implementation science. Little is known about how this new stream of research compares with scholarship on policy implementation within public administration. This paper provides a comparative review of more than 1,50...

Drawing upon the theories of social skill and strategic action fields (SAFs), this article presents a SAF Framework for Implementation Research. In the framework, policy implementation systems are conceptualized as multilevel SAFs that form around a public service intervention. Within this context, socially skilled actors leverage diverse sources o...

This paper examines how the extraction of home equity, including but not limited to equity extracted through reverse mortgages, affects credit outcomes of senior households. We use data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, supplemented with our unique credit panel dataset of reverse mortgage borrowers. We track c...

Equity in a home can serve as an important source of supplemental income in retirement. Reverse mortgages allow seniors to draw down equity without selling their home, and without a monthly mortgage payment. The most widely used reverse mortgage product is offered by Federal Housing Administration’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program.Th...

Households can borrow against equity through different channels, including home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), second liens, cash-out refinancing, and—for senior homeowners—reverse mortgages. We use data from the New York Federal Reserve/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other sources to join...

This chapter explores the potential of behaviorally motivated “mortgage reserve accounts” as an automated tool to build emergency savings for otherwise vulnerable low- and moderate-income (LMI) households purchasing their first homes. Financial shocks, such as involuntary unemployment or reduction in wages, and unexpected expenses, such as emergenc...

Households can borrow against equity through different channels, including home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), second liens, cash-out refinancing, and--for senior homeowners--reverse mortgages. We use data from the New York Federal Reserve/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other sources to jo...

We evaluate the effects of the lending institution and soft information on mortgage loan performance for low-income homebuyers. We find that even after controlling for the propensity of a borrower to get a loan from a local bank based on observable characteristics, those who receive a loan from a local bank branch are significantly less likely to b...

In the wake of the housing crisis in 2008, U.S. policymakers have developed a range of policy proposals to address the risk of mortgage borrowers going into payment default. Some of these proposed regulations would effectively eliminate certain loans with riskier borrower characteristics from the market. Such prescriptive approaches fail to recogni...

This paper provides a systematic review of the state of policy and program implementation research over the last ten years. We take two sampling approaches. First, we identify 1,375 published articles focused on policy or program implementation listed in the Expanded Social Science Citation Index in the Web of Science. Drawing upon conceptual model...

Building on the publicness, organizational theory, and policy diffusion literatures, we describe and evaluate the relationships between organizational and two distinct types of environmental publicness and organizational practices. Through hierarchical linear modeling, we integrate organizational-level data on substance abuse treatment centers part...

Program participation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the success of housing policies such as mortgage assistance for distressed homeowners. Low rates of take-up of available assistance among eligible homeowners have hampered the potential success of programs such as the U.S. Treasury’s Hardest Hit Fund initiative. This paper invest...

An AmeriCorps program at OSU Extension offices was tested in rural Ohio counties with particularly high foreclosure growth rates. The goal was to increase rural homeowners' awareness about the statewide foreclosure prevention efforts. Fourteen AmeriCorps members provided rural homeowners with information and assisted with the online enrollment in t...

While reverse mortgages are intended as a tool to enable financial security for older homeowners, in 2012, nearly 10 percent of reverse mortgage borrowers in the federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program were in default on their property taxes or homeowners insurance. A variety of policy responses were implemented in 2013, in...

This study documents the extent to which first-time homebuyers seeking a mortgage accurately estimate their borrowing capacity and how this is associated with their decisions regarding mortgage debt and the take-up of a free offer of financial coaching. We find that consumers who underestimate their nonmortgage debt (31.5% of the sample) also take...

Private organizations are increasingly relied on, explicitly and implicitly, to carry out public objectives. But given that profit and public motives are not always aligned, why do private firms behave in publicly responsible ways? Specifically, how do diverse regulative, economic, normative, and cultural influences combine to enable or constrain p...

Pre-purchase homebuyer education and counseling have evolved significantly over the past few decades. While there is much support for homebuyer education and counseling generally, particularly in light of the recent mortgage crisis, less attention has been given to the diversity of interventions, targeted homebuyers, and desired outcomes. Pre-purch...

Bank branches have been disappearing in some major metropolitan areas, as their populations and economic activity decline. Our research suggests that brick-and-mortar branches provide tangible benefi ts to consumers, especially in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. When branches are located in these areas, borrowers living there default less a...

We evaluate the effects of the lending institution and soft information on mortgage loan performance for low income homebuyers. We find that even after controlling for the propensity of a borrower to get a loan from a local bank based on observable characteristics, those who receive a loan from a local bank are significantly less likely to become d...

Nonprofit organizations are increasingly advised to become fiscally self-sufficient and reduce resource dependence to preserve autonomy. However, little is known empirically about the relationships between particular resource streams and the roles espoused by nonprofit organizations that define their public value, including service delivery, innova...

"Empirical publicness" explains organizations on the basis of their mix of political and economic authority, whereas "normative publicness" seeks to identify, prescribe or infuse public values. The scholarly traditions developed by these two types of publicness have tended not to overlap and for very good reason—blending empirical and normative the...

Evaluating the performance of nonprofit organizations has been of growing importance for the last several decades. Although there is much good that can come out of self-improvement, there is substantial heterogeneity within the sector that calls into question the usefulness of ‘‘across the board’’ evaluation tools. In this article, the authors asse...

Public Administration (PA) ¡s a field characterized by great diversity in theoretical approaches and methodological tactics. This wide scope lends itself to potential epistemological and methodological fragmentation, which prevents scholars from adequately appreciating and building on each other's work. Although many scholars value PA's theoretical...

Previous evaluations of publicness have focused largely on organizations and organizational behavior. This analysis extends the applicability of publicness one step further, to consider the effect of the publicness of policy environments on resulting individual-level outcomes. Subprime or high-cost mortgage lending was an increasingly dominant stra...

Originating lenders play a vital role in selecting and preparing borrowers for homeownership, directly and through partnerships with community entities. While previous research demonstrates the importance of originating lenders for mortgage access to low- and moderate-income borrowers, this analysis evaluates the influence of the originating lender...

In the United States, housing policies focused on assisting low-income families toward homeownership have resulted in the creation of publicly subsidized affordable mortgage programs. Private lenders and their employees (loan originators) are often the key point of contact to connect low-income borrowers to public programs. But why would loan origi...

What are the differences between the public and private sectors as well as their interrelationships in light of the recent financial crisis? Has the global economic crisis fundamentally shifted the boundaries between the two sectors? This essay examines the nature and extent of the shift. The authors present an analysis of the Troubled Asset Relief...

In light of the blurring between sectors, it is critical not only to understand public organizations, but also to identify factors that contribute to the achievement of public outcomes across sectors. To what extent does organizational “publicness” lend insight to understanding and managing for public outcomes? By integrating the theory of dimensio...

A great deal of public service motivation (PSM) research has focused on understanding different types of PSM to describe public sector employees, including Samaritans, communitarians, patriots, and humanitarians. This research investigates different types of PSM for private sector individuals working in a single policy area, mortgage lending, and h...

Low and moderate-income households are less likely to plan for long term financial goals, in-cluding retirement, and are less likely to seek out assistance with long term financial planning. Offering behavior-based financial planning interventions that leverage technology at teachable moments may prove to be an efficient and effective strategy to r...

The recent mortgage crisis calls into question the first time homebuyer's ability to appropriately evaluate and manage debt when making mortgage decisions. In this analysis, we leverage data collected through a field experiment of 573 first time lower income homebuyers in Ohio to investigate the following questions: To what extent do lower-income h...