2  BIS Review 14/2002  However, neither wealth nor the burden of debt is distributed evenly across households. Hence, the spending effects of changes in these influences also will not be evenly distributed. For example, increased debt burdens appear disproportionately attributable to higher-income households.
Calculations by staff at the Federal Reserve suggest that the ratio of household liabilities to annual income for the top fifth of all households ranked by income, who accounted for 44 percent of total after-tax household income last year, rose from about 1.10 at the end of 1998 to 1.20 at the end of the third quarter of 2001.