How Many Indebted Households Worldwide? A Global Estimate of Everyday Household Debt

Combien y a-t-il de ménages endettés dans le monde ? Estimation mondiale de l'endettement quotidien des ménages

Arnaud Natal () and Isabelle Guérin ()
Additional contact information
Arnaud Natal: IFP - Institut Français de Pondichéry - MEAE - Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UB - Université de Bordeaux, BSE - Bordeaux sciences économiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Isabelle Guérin: IFP - Institut Français de Pondichéry - MEAE - Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IRD [Ile-de-France] - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, CESSMA UMRD 245 - Centre d'études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Inalco - Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales - UPCité - Université Paris Cité

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Household debt has expanded dramatically worldwide, yet little is known about how many people rely on borrowing simply to meet basic needs. This paper provides the first global estimate of everyday debt. In the absence of harmonised international data, we adopt an indirect estimation strategy based on three complementary proxies: poverty rates, social protection coverage gaps, and observed informal or non-productive borrowing. Across these approaches, estimates converge between one quarter and two fifths of the global population. The debt-based proxy indicates that at least 33.3% of the world's population (i.e., over 2.59 billion people) regularly rely on borrowing to make ends meet. Country case studies (United Kingdom, United States, France, Brazil, and India) demonstrate that official indicators systematically underestimate this phenomenon. We argue that everyday indebtedness is not marginal but structural, reflecting wage stagnation, labour precarity, welfare retrenchment, and the financialisation of social reproduction.

Keywords: Financialisation; Poverty; Welfare state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05547460v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05547460v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05547460

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().