The inexorable growth of student debt, charted with R

Len Kiefer, Deputy Chief Economist at Freddie Mac, recently published the following chart to his personal blog showing household debt in the United States (excluding mortgage debt). As you can see, student loan debt has steadily increased over the last 13 years and has now eclipsed all other forms of non-mortgage debt:

He also created this animated chart showing the growth (and occasional decline) of all forms of debt (including mortgages). All categories are scaled to the same nominal value in March 2003, and since that time student debt in the US has more than quintupled.

Both charts were created using the R language (the code is included in the blog post linked below). The data come from the New York Federal Reserve, which Len reads into R using fread from the data.table package. The line charts were created using the ggplot2 package, with the ggrepel extension to keep the labels from overlapping. The animated version was created using the saveGIF function of the animation package.

For more charts (including some interesting by-state charts) and the complete details on the implementation, follow the link to Len's blog below.

Len Kiefer: Consumer Credit Trends (via Sharon Machlis)

Comments

[Carl Witthoft]

A grammar nitpicker checking in. Student debt levels are anything *but* "inexorable." The levels of debt are deliberately controlled by [someone] via current laws banning debtors from re-mortaging to take advantage of current interest rates and from declaring bankruptcy. Then there's the mountain of debt related to semi-criminal online "universities."

[Luca Ravioli]

" Student debt levels are anything *but* "inexorable." The levels of debt are deliberately controlled by [someone] via current laws banning debtors from re-mortaging to take advantage of current interest rates "

Do you mean that the student debt cannot be refinanced by getting an other loan with a lower interest rate?

I think we should start teaching a little finance and double entry bookkeeping in high school. That way one can understand these liabilities (loans) before one takes them out. One should also look into what happens after the degree.

But, finance and double entry bookkeeping should be taught for their value. Especially in "capitalist" countries. Some have said that double entry bookkeeping is part of a well educated persons background.

[Madeline]

" The data come from the New York Federal Reserve, which Robert reads into R" ,,, who is Robert? Did I misread something?

[David Smith]

@Madeline, oops my error there - I don't know what I was thinking of. Corrected above.