Zhang Mengxu, People’s Daily
The aggregate household debt balances in the U.S. increased to a record high of $13.95 trillion, or 73 percent of the country’s GDP, in the third quarter of 2019, said a recent report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mortgage balances accounted for 2/3 of the total household debt balances, followed by student loans that took 11 percent of the share.Besides, auto loans and credit card balances also stood at a high level.
Each household in the U.S. carrying at least one form of debt owed an average of $144,100, said a report issued by America’s Debt Help Organization.
“With new car prices in May of 2019 were over $37,000, an affordable auto loan now comes with a five- or six-year repayment schedule. Credit card interest rates also continue rising as balances edge up.In the last decade, non-mortgage consumer debt has increased to $4 trillion, a record even when adjusted for inflation,” the report said.
Housing prices and higher education costs are rising far faster than most people’s incomes, forcing them to either take on larger debts, the report said.They are borrowing more on their credit cards, taking on soaring levels of student debt and signing more and more personal loans, all making the next recession even riskier for those already struggling to make payments, it added.
Stephanie from Illinois is a social worker who owns a student loan of $151,000 for college education, mostly of which is all interest because of her payment plan. To pay the loan, she has left nothing untried.
“I have a family and I fear I will never pay this back,” she said.
The story of Stephanie is not a rare example.According to a report by Washington Post,45 million Americans have student loans totaling$1.6 trillion, more than twice of those in 2009.
New York Times said in an article that 2/3 of college students in the U.S. tookondebt last year, and the average burden for indebted college graduates is now nearly $30,000. Millions of borrowers continued to struggle to pay their student loans, as a quarter of federal direct loan borrowers were either delinquent or in default at the end of 2018, the report introduced.
Another New York Times report said that the U.S. Congress created a student loan forgiveness program in 2007, but fewer than 1 percent of those who have applied for relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program have been deemed eligible.
The vast majority of denials happened because people did not enroll in a loan or repayment plan that qualified, even if their chosen professions did, and most were not told of the error until the rejection notice’s arrival, the report explained.
The report said that the forgiveness program was messy and filled with complicated requirements that borrowers and lenders have struggled to understand, and the Education Department has made no effort to improve what is within its control.
Unlike most other forms of debt, student loans aren’t dischargeable through bankruptcy, which means borrowers are obligated to make payments even if they don’t have the income, said the Debt Help Organization report. People default for a variety of reasons, but job loss or failure to land a position that pays enough to make loan payments are common problems.
“Student debt is a multi-generational problem as parents and even grandparents sign loans to help the student. If the student can’t pay, the debt becomes a family problem,” the report said.
New Yorker magazine said in a September article that from the late nineteen-eighties to the present, college tuition has increased at a rate four times that of inflation, and eight times that of household income, and some fear that the student-debt “bubble” will be the next to burst.
Middle-class families might not seem like the most sympathetic characters, the New Yorker article noted. Citing a late 1980s study, the article explained that the Americans filing for bankruptcy rarely lacked education or spent recklessly. Rather, they were often college-educated couples who were unable to recover from random crises along the way, like emergency medical bills.
The article commented that in the eighties, more than half of American twentysomethings were financially independent. However,in the past decade, nearly seventy percent of young adults in their twenties have received money from their parents.“The risk is collective, and the consequences are shared across generations,” it said.
According to a report by Isabel Sawhill and Christopher Pulliam from the Brookings Institution, the richest top 1 percent of American households held over 29 percent of the country’s collective wealth in 2016, and the top 20 percent held 77 percent of total household wealth. However, the bottom 20 percent of the households only accounted for 2 percent of America’s collective wealth.
“The United States is a rich country, but it is becoming one in which a very small number of citizens own most of the wealth, and from which both younger Americans and the broad middle class are failing to benefit,” the report remarked.
美国家庭债务负担持续加重
人民日报记者 张梦旭
美国纽约联邦储备银行日前发布的数据显示，截至今年9月底，美国家庭未偿债务总额达到创纪录的13.95万亿美元，约占GDP的73%。这其中，住房抵押贷款占到家庭总债务的2/3，其次是学生贷款，占家庭总债务的11%。另外，汽车贷款、信用卡消费贷款等绝对数值也不可小觑。
美国“债务帮助组织”最新发布的报告显示，美国平均每个家庭负债14.41万美元，创下历史纪录，“美国民众的房贷、车贷和个人贷款的使用都在增加。剔除房贷后的家庭债务总额也超过4万亿美元”。
“美国的房价和大学学费增长速度远快于普通人收入，他们用信用卡透支消费，签下越来越多的个人贷款，为未来的金融危机埋下隐患。”该报告这样写道。
伊利诺伊州的斯蒂芬妮是一名社区工作者，她因为上大学欠下了15.1万美元的学生贷款，现在为如何分期偿还贷款伤透了脑筋。 “我现在有自己的家庭，每个月除去必需的开支，余钱只够偿还学生贷款的利息。我担心我永远无法还清这笔学生贷款。”斯蒂芬妮说。
斯蒂芬妮的情况在美国绝非个例。《华盛顿邮报》报道说，美国有4500万人背负学生贷款，总额近1.6万亿美元，是2009年的两倍多。《纽约时报》报道说，2018年毕业的本科生中有2/3靠学生贷款完成学业，平均借款超过3万美元。但是按时偿还这些债务变得越来越具有挑战性，2018年有25%的人没有按时还款。
《纽约时报》报道称，美国国会在2007年曾制订一项学生贷款减免计划，截至目前成功获得贷款免除的人只占该计划申请人的1%，很多人苦等10年才被告知不符合要求，原因也是五花八门，包括贷款项目或还款计划不合规定、职业不在免除名单之列等。这项减免计划充满借款人和贷款方难以理解的复杂要求，政府部门也没有作出任何努力来使这项计划变得更具有可操作性。
“债务帮助组织”的报告说，与大多数其他形式的债务不同，学生贷款不能通过个人破产来解除，这意味着借款人即使没有收入也有义务偿还债务。人们违约的原因多种多样，其中失业和薪水不足以还款是两大主要原因。“这种情况下，偿还学生贷款成为全家多代人的问题，父母、祖父母都在想办法贷款以帮助孩子还贷”。
《纽约客》杂志刊文称，从上世纪80年代末到现在，大学学费的增长速度是同期通胀率的4倍，是家庭收入增速的8倍，很多人担心债务“泡沫”会在未来某一天破裂。中产阶层看起来好像不是最值得同情的角色，然而从调查结果来看，很多受过良好大学教育、开支有节制的中产家庭在学生债务面前也显示出很大的脆弱性，他们无法应对未知的危机，甚至无法支付紧急意外医疗开支。
文章评论称，上世纪80年代，超过一半的美国人在20多岁时就能实现经济独立，但现在近七成20多岁的年轻人依然要靠父母资助。“风险是集体的，后果需要几代人共同承担。”
美国智库布鲁金斯学会研究员伊莎贝尔•索希尔和克里斯托弗•普里亚姆在一份报告中说，美国家庭财富越来越向少数家庭集中，2016年最富有的1%家庭拥有美国家庭财富总值的29%，最富有的20%家庭拥有家庭财富总值的77%，最贫穷的20%家庭仅拥有家庭财富总值的2%。“美国是一个富裕的国家，但它正在日益成为一个少数人拥有大部分财富的国家，而年轻人和广大的中产阶层都无法从中受益。”
