Consumer Revolving Credit and Debt Over the Life Cycle and Business Cycle

Despite the centrality of credit and debt in the financial lives of Americans, little is known about how U.S. consumers' access and utilization of credit changes in the short and long term, and how these changes are related to changes in U.S. consumers' debt. This paper uses data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), which contains a 5 percent sample of every credit account in the United States from 1999 to 2014 from the credit reporting agency Equifax. It examines how changing credit availability, debt, and utilization over the business cycle and the life cycle and across individuals relate to U.S. consumers' patterns of incurring, carrying, and paying off their debts. Much of this paper focuses on credit cards, since these have observable limits and are widely held, but the paper also briefly examines other forms of debt over the consumer life cycle