Study: 16% of Retired NFL Players Go Bankrupt
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NFL Shield (NFL)(NEW YORK) — The rewards of playing in the NFL may be fleeting for some of the players who choose to put their bodies at risk.
A study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that of the thousands of players drafted into the NFL during the years of 1996 through 2003, almost 16% of them declared bankruptcy within 12 years of retirement.
“Moreover, bankruptcy rates are not affected by a player’s total earnings or career length. Having played for a long time and been well-paid does not provide much protection against the risk of going bankrupt,” researchers concluded.
For example, Terrell Owens, a six-time pro bowler drafted in 1996, made an estimated $80 million during his 15-season NFL career and filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
Researchers examined NFL players’ financial behavior to test the traditional life-cycle model of savings. That theory claims that people optimize their consumption over their entire lifetimes, which would indicate that NFL players would have set aside a large portion of their income for when they retired from the league.
“Our findings are different from what the life-cycle model predicts,” the study wrote.
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