Consumer leverage ratio

The consumer leverage ratio, a concept popularized by William Jarvis and Dr. Ian C MacMillan in a series of articles in the Harvard Business Review, is the ratio of total household debt, as reported by the Federal Reserve System, to disposable personal income, as reported by the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ratio has been used in economic analysis and reporting and has been compared to other relevant economic variables since the 1970s.