Richard Mendales

U.S. Household Debt: A Frightening Picture

It shouldn't be all that surprising. Median real incomes have declined pretty steadily in the U.S. since 1973, and so people are trying to keep up both by working longer hours and by borrowing. This is particularly true in education, where the cost of educating your kids has gone up far faster than the overall CPI, and in health care, where we not only have the well-recognized problem of the uninsured, but an increasing problem with people who are uninsured. Empirical studies have shown that over the last 10 years or more, more than half of personal bankruptcy cases have been filed because of health care emergencies. The real crisis is not one of profligate borrowing, but of unavoidable expenses growing faster than median incomes.