The first chart above shows the historic growth in U.S. household debt. The second chart shows the distribution of U.S. household debt as of the fourth quarter of 2008. Tomorrow I will have a chart on debt service ratios.
Data source:
U.S. Federal Reserve, G.19. and Flow of Funds report.
The second chart above uses the Fed’s Flow of Funds Q4′08 data on household debt. It also uses the distribution of revolving and non-revolving consumer credit from the G.19 report.
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Interesting to see that the accumulation of debt over the past 30yrs has been steady indeed. Notice the doubling of debt every 10yrs since 1980. That was pretty surprising to me. for some reason I figured that our penchant for debt accumulation was only in the past 10-12yrs or so. We are all in for a rude awakening when the day of reckoning draws near for sure.
Comment by John Fontana — June 2, 2009 @ 2:05 am
How many households are there now compared to 1980? This is another chart I’d like to see indexed to number of households.
Comment by slk23 — June 2, 2009 @ 10:34 am
There are about 111 million households in the U.S. today. In 1980, there were about 79-80 million households in the U.S.
Comment by admin — June 2, 2009 @ 6:35 pm