The recession of 2008 and 2009 had many causes. A lax regulatory environment for complex derivatives and overly aggressive Wall Street firms played a large part. However, we cannot forget the contribution of the average American who took on more debt than they could handle. Dan Murray from InterWorks has made this visualization to tell the story of household debt (as a percentage of income) over the past thirty years.
About this Viz
The visualization on the left shows how average household debt has increased from around 15% in 1980 to nearly 19% at the beginning of last year. However, thanks in part to foreclosures and defaults, the rate plummeted from Q1 to Q4 of 2009. A similar trend occurred after the Savings and Loan debacle of the early 1990's (which is most clearly visible in the values for 1992 in the visualization at the bottom right).
