Economics Atlas

How Wealth Is Ordered
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Economic Indicators

Consumer Leverage Ratio

Money, Credit and Financial Markets

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The Consumer Leverage Ratio is the ratio of total household debt to disposable personal income, popularized by William Jarvis and Ian C. MacMillan in the Harvard Business Review, and it is read as an approximation of how many years of disposable income it would take an average household to pay off all of its outstanding debt. A rising ratio signals that household borrowing is growing faster than household income, which is watched as a sign of building financial fragility in the household sector, while a falling ratio suggests households are deleveraging relative to their income. It is used alongside other household debt measures to assess how exposed consumer spending is to a shock in interest rates or income.

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