How Household Debt Levels Have Evolved

According to the latest data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), household debt in the United States amounted to 74.4 percent of GDP in 2022. This ratio is higher than several other major economies (between 50 and 55 percent in Spain and Germany, 66 percent in France and 68 percent in Japan). In 2022, four countries had a household debt ratio in excess of 100 percent of GDP: Switzerland (128 percent), Australia (112 percent), South Korea (105 percent) and Canada (102 percent).

Over the past thirty years, the level of household debt in relation to GDP has risen considerably in developed countries. For all eight economies analyzed in the following infographic, the average debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from 51 percent in 1990 to 77 percent in 2022. Many industrialized countries, with the notable exception of Germany and Japan, experienced a sharp peak in household debt to GDP in the early 2000s. This excess of personal debt was one of the underlying causes of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Since then, household debt levels have tended to fall back in some countries, such as Spain and the United States, while in others they have risen again.