Cognitive ability, cognitive aging, and debt accumulation

Originating and managing debt are cognitively demanding tasks that have become more challenging in the past few decades with increasing variety complexity of available financial products. We examine how cognitive ability is related to burdens among older adults whether this relationship has changed over time increasingly complex landscape. find an important predictor age individuals higher taken on levels relative their counterparts environments, leading increased fragility relatively sophisticated consumers. Our findings broadly inconsistent intermediaries systematically pushing complicated products onto unsophisticated borrowers.