Challenging how social scientists, policymakers, legal scholars, and the public examine household debts and wellbeing, Viral Debt traces how debt moves within and across households to communities and institutions, with devastating effects.

Debt is not merely a contractual condition, it is also an inherently unequal relationship between creditor and debtor that can exploit pre-existing vulnerabilities while creating new ones. With a roster of leading social science and socio-legal scholars, this book shows how debt – like a contagion – works systematically across economic and social structures and geographies, demonstrating the ways in which policy has exacerbated the problem of debt through policy choices.

This volume offers urgent answers by drawing on quantitative data about household indebtedness, credit and debt policies, and local court actions, together with qualitative research.