What do borrowers, lenders and the generations after them owe one another?
Households, firms and governments borrow, and how much a government owes, measured against a year’s output, differs greatly from one country to another. What does a debt oblige, and to whom?
The picture
What the numbers show, read from the Data library each time the page opens.
How to read the chart above, and the words it uses.
How to read the data
The figure compares what the central government owes with one year of the country’s output. A higher share means more of future income is promised to creditors; whether that is heavy depends on interest rates, growth and what the borrowing paid for.
Key terms
Central government debt
What the national government owes in bonds and loans, not regional or private debt.
GDP
Gross domestic product: the value of what a country produces in a year.
Interest
The price paid to lenders for the use of their money.
Who has a stake
Each interest, then readings from the Catholic library and the Classics library that bear on it, oldest first. Choose a group to read.
Money now to build, to bridge a bad year or to buy a home, and the chance to repay on terms that do not crush them; for a government, the means to act in an emergency without raising every tax at once.
To be repaid what was lent, a fair return for the risk, and the safety of the savings, pensions and deposits that stand behind the loans.
What the interest costs, since money paid in interest cannot be spent on schools, clinics or roads, and a say in what the borrowing was for.
A country that is not already spoken for: the public goods they inherit, and the obligations they did not choose.
For discussion
When a debt can no longer be paid in full, how should the loss be shared between those who borrowed, those who lent and those who pay the taxes?
What may a government fairly ask of today’s taxpayers so that generations to come inherit assets and not only obligations?
Where a country’s lenders are its own savers, how should their claim be weighed against the claims of those who depend on public services?
