Facts & Figures on Debt

At the time of publication, the total outstanding debt of the United States government is $14,215,744,197,688.26 -- or roughly $14.2 trillion. That represents the equivalent of $46,000 per person living in the U.S.; $121,000 per household; and $303,000 for each household that pays more federal taxes than it receives in federal benefits. American consumers appear to be following suit, but they are getting into debt just to keep food on the table, gas in their vehicles and current on their bills paid.

Debt

Debt has presented an ongoing problem in societies for thousands of years, from those times when you could literally be enslaved or dumped into debtor's prison for unpaid debts, to more recent times, which have seen record numbers of personal bankruptcy filings. Roughly 40 percent of American families spend more each year than they earn. When people use credit cards in fast-food restaurants, they are likely to spend up to 50 percent more than they would by using cash. In 1791, the U.S. national debt was just $75 million; at the time of publication, the national debt rises by that amount every hour.

Scope

If you take 1 trillion $10 bills and tape them end-to-end, they would stretch around the planet more than 380 times, yet it would not be enough to pay off the national debt. By the time President Ronald Reagan left office, the United States had gone from being the world's largest creditor for other nations to the largest debtor nation. The average personal wealth -- including home equity -- for a 50-year-old American is less than $40,000 at the time of publication. One out of every 20 bankruptcies is due to medical bills, with the typical health-care debt reaching $25,000. Often, the bankrupt individual is an elderly person on a fixed income, and the debt is largely due to pricey medications paid for with high-interest credit cards.

Figures

The average household debt in the U.S. is around $14,500, not including mortgage debt, with the average credit card debt per family at around $8,400. The average family pays roughly $1,200 a year in credit-card interest. Charging $1,000 on a credit card -- at an interest rate of 18.9 percent -- will end up costing $3,300 and take 22 years to pay off, for those making minimum payments only. In September 2009, Federal Reserve statistics revealed that Americans owed $917 billion on revolving credit lines, including $69 billion that was past due.

Government

For every dollar the federal government spends, it must borrow 41 cents. The national debt has grown by an average rate of 8.5 percent each year since 1938. When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the national debt stood at nearly $10 trillion, and after two years in office, he added $4 trillion more to the debt. The most recent budget proposed by the president predicts another $5 trillion in deficits over the next five years.