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

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.