Bankruptcy Statistics United States

 ... Statistics and Information

Debt Statistics

Author: S. Lieberman

Below are some debt statistics that you may find interesting to read.

* Almost one out of every 100 households in the United States will file for bankruptcy.
* Out of all card holders within the U.S., 51% are females
* 43% of U.S. families spend more than they earn.
* Only 2% of homes in America are paid for 92% of U.S. family disposable income is spent on paying debts.
* Making minimum payments on a credit card with a ,800 balance, at 17% interest would take 39 years and seven months to pay off. Paying ,818.63 in interest alone, and a total of ,619 for the privilege of charging the ,800.
* Approximately 46% of all Americans have less than ,000 saved for retirement. 39% of Americans are concerned about their ability to achieve their desired retirement lifestyle.
* An ,000 debt at 18% interest will take over 25 years to repay and cost over ,000 in the long run.
* The average American household has 13 charge cards. There are 1.3 billion payment cards in circulation in the United States.
* Americans made .1 Trillion worth of credit card purchases in 1999.
* Americans carry, on average, ,800 in credit card debt from month to month. If one were to make only the minimum payment on that debt every month, it would take 30 years to pay off – and include an additional ,000 in interest.
* According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, 391,873 people filed for bankruptcy in the third quarter of 2002.
* On average the typical credit card purchase is 112% higher than if using cash.
* 96% of all Americans will retire financially dependent on the government, family, or charity

If you need to get yourself our of debt. Apply here —> Debt Consolidation

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/debt-consolidation-articles/debt-statistics-456290.html

About the Author

Writing financial and debt consolidation articles for over 10 yrs. Been in the credit counseling biz for as long as well



Comments

  1. I love yanking your chain says:

    Is anyone bothered at all by these statistics? Do we really have?
    the best health care system? PLEASE just read through and tell me that something is really wrong when the greatest country in the world stacks up to other countries in the way we do.

    Reports & statistics from the OECD:

    • Half of all bankruptcies IN THE US are caused by medical bills
    • Three-quarters of those filings are by people with health insurance.
    • The average overhead cost for U.S. private health insurers is 11.7%; for Medicare, it is 3.6%; for Canada’s national health insurance program, it is 1.3 %
    • A baby born in El Salvador has a better chance of surviving than a baby in Detroit.
    • The infant mortality rate in Detroit is 15.5, compared to El Salvador’s rate of 9.7.12
    • Over the next decade, the US federal government will give the drug & health care industries an estimated $822 billion as a result of the 2003 Medicare Part D (Medicare prescription drug plan).
    • There are four times as many health care lobbyists in Washington as there are members of Congress
    • There are 100 times more lobbyists of all stripes in Washington today than there were during the Reagan presidency.
    • 90% of Americans believe the American health care system needs fundamental changes or needs to be completely rebuilt. 75% of Americans believe the federal government should guarantee universal health care for all citizens.
    Life expectancy

    1. San Marino …….. 80
    2. Australia ……….. 79
    3. Cyprus …………. 79
    4. Iceland…………. 79
    5. Israel……………. 79
    6. Japan………….. 79
    7. Sweden………… 79
    8. Switzerland…… 79
    9. Andorra………… 78
    10. Canada…………. 78
    11. Italy……………… 78
    12. Monaco……….. 78
    13. Netherlands…. 78
    14. New Zealand .. 78
    15. Norway………… 78
    US 38th on list

    LOWEST INFANT MORTALITY (RATE per THOUSAND BIRTHS)

    1. Singapore….. 2.31
    2. Bermuda…… 2.46
    3. Sweden……… 2.75
    4. Japan………… 2.79
    5. Iceland…….. 3.23
    6. France ………. 3.33
    7. Finland……. 3.47
    8. Anguilla…… 3.52
    9. Norway…….. 3.58
    10. Malta……….. 3.75
    11. Andorra…… 3.76
    12. Czech Republic … 3.79
    13. Germany……… 3.99
    14. Switzerland….. 4.18
    15. Spain ………….. 4.21

    2007- United States Infant Mortality Rate Average = 6.37 Deaths per 1000 Live Births

    One of the worst, AFGHANISTAN, is at 152 deaths per 1000…..

    TOP FIVE – CHILD DEATHS – DUE TO MALTREATMENT SOURCE – UNICEF

    1. Mexico: …………. 2.2 per 100,000 children
    2. United States:.. 2.2 per 100,000 children
    3. Hungary:……….. 1.2 per 100,000 children
    4. New Zealand:… 1.2 per 100,000 children
    5. Austria: …………. 0.9 per 100,000 children

    TOP FIVE — CHILD POVERTY – SOURCE: UNICEF

    # 1. Mexico:……… 26.2
    # 2. United States:.. 22.4
    # 3. Italy:…………… 20.5
    # 4. United Kingdom:. 19.8
    # 5. Turkey:……….. 19.7

    2008 – FORBES – TOP TEN – OVERALL HEALTHIEST COUNTRIES

    1. ICELAND
    2. SWEDEN
    3. FINLAND
    4. GERMANY
    5. SWITZERLAND
    6. AUSTRALIA
    7. DENMARK
    8. CANADA
    9. AUSTRIA
    10. NETHERLANDS

    ** USA was #11!

    Among the OECD’s 30 members – (which include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) – there are only 3 members lacking universal health coverage[. Two of them, Mexico and Turkey, have the excuse of being poorer than the rest (and until the onset of the world economic crisis, Mexico was on the way to providing healthcare to all of its citizens).

    The third, of course, is the United States.
    Maxwell, that’s too bad. The stats are NOT mine. They are from the OECD. So you think they just make up numbers that are not true? That’s about as logical as the birther movement.

  2. DAD says:

    middle class dying………………….?
    ‘s note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

    The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

    The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

    So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

    Here are the statistics to prove it:

    • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
    • 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
    • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
    • 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
    • A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
    • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
    • Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
    • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
    • For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
    • In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
    • As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
    • The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
    • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
    • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
    • The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
    • In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
    • More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
    • or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
    • This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
    • Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
    • Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
    • The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

    Giant Sucking Sound

    The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new “global” labor pool.

    What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are “less attractive&

  3. gws35 says:

    Which president signed NAFTA into law?
    http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here%27s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA
    The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
    “the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

    Here are the statistics to prove it:

    • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
    • 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
    • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
    • 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
    • A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
    • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
    • Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
    • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
    • For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
    • In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
    • As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
    • The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
    • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
    • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
    • The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
    • In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
    • More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
    • or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
    • This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
    • Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
    • Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
    • The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

    Giant Sucking Sound

    The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new “global” labor pool. ”
    Why do leftist apologists act like Clinton was powerless to withdraw from NAFTA?

  4. gws35 says:

    For those who were here last night, do these statistics look familiar?
    http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here%27s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA
    The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
    “the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

    Here are the statistics to prove it:

    • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
    • 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
    • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
    • 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
    • A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
    • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
    • Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
    • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
    • For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
    • In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
    • As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
    • The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
    • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
    • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
    • The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
    • In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
    • More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
    • or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
    • This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
    • Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
    • Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
    • The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

    Giant Sucking Sound

    The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new “global” labor pool. ”

    Bill Clinton was the one who signed NAFTA, against the firm advice of Ross Perot. He’s the one to blame for all of this. And I notice Obama is doing nothing to stop any of this.

    Do you now LOL the person who was posting them last night without a source, so he could blame them on the Republicans?

  5. fishn says:

    Middle Class America how’s that Trickle Down Theory working for you ? Do you agree with the statistics ?
    Here’s a few statistics

    • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
    • 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
    • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
    • 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
    • A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
    • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
    • Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
    • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
    • For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
    • In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
    • As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
    • The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
    • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
    • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
    • The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
    • In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
    • More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
    • or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
    • This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
    • Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
    • Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
    • The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

    So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

    What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of “chronically unemployed” is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

    Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

    But you can’t raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald’s or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

    The truth is that the middle class in America is dying — and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

  6. Anonymous says:

    So you think all this is one Presidents or one political party is at fault. Sad. All Americans are too blame. Most Americans are fat, lazy and ignorant. It takes hard work and diligence to make a living and support a family. Many Americans just flat refuse. When you refuse, your job goes to someone else or it goes over seas. Your fault, not the government, yours.

  7. Anonymous says:

    It isn’t working out for me. I feel like I have been Urinated on.

    I went from the upper middle to being at the Poverty line. I don’t blame it on Obama I worked for a Corporation, and I witnessted the tactics they use first hand to destroy the Middle Class in the USA.

  8. Anonymous says:

    As someone who works closely with the medical insurance industry, I know all about those stats, man.

    I’m just surprised people are this ignorant to assume that nothing should be done about it. Obama is, at least, thinking in the right direction even if his ideas are not embraced.

  9. Anonymous says:

    yeah, and i will further the point by asking cons…
    “how many times does one need to get hit w/ a baseball bat, before you take the bat away? ”

    this is the result of three decades of deregulation allowing outsourcing and wage reductions/ freezes for those that work while those at the top increase their “bonuses” (into the tens of millions of dollars)

    from 30:1 to 300:1 is the most important point in that article…and al they did was, ship our manufacturing base to communist nations…
    imagine if LBJ shipped our GM plants to Russia? oh the outcry! but not right now…nope, not a peep from the cons, they miss this point.

  10. Anonymous says:

    President Bill Clinton in 1993

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