Survey responses are cheap talk - Mahalonobis

So it is really no surprise that a survey would find most bankruptcy causes totally orthogonal to personal vices. The tendentious nature of this study is reflected by how they classify personal vices like gambling or drug addiction as a medical cause, just to make certain their result would appear (as if you would catch these afflictions like the flu). As Wittengenstein said, sometimes you are not measuring with the ruler, you are measuring the ruler itself, in this case the ruler is the vague and loaded question. Clearly if a stranger asks you if your sorry financial condition is due to 1) your poor judgement or 2) something else, most people opt for #2.

Talk is cheap.

In sum, I don't think I've ever seen sociology research by doctors that wasn't shoddy and incomplete, but never in doubt as to its policy implications.

Sociology in the hands of doctors is cheaper.

In the UAE it is not uncommon for nationals to be unable to pay their lenders. This can mean a jail sentence. The interesting thing is the government routinely gives these debtors early release and pays off their debts.

To be fair, the sudden wealth of the UAE meant that during the 1980s much of the population had money, but was unfamiliar with money management. But today that can no longer be said. People understand credit cards and the like, and they see how debtors have been treated.

Ironically, a major public policy question here is personal bankruptcy as the result of "poor judgment." The obvious answer is, you get what you pay for. After all, people respond to incentives.

I note the parallels with cancelling the debts of poor countries.