In contrast, the rise in the financial obligations ratios for renters since the early 1990s has been steep. The increase for renters, as for homeowners, is concentrated in credit card lending and thus may reflect some of the same qualifying factors that have influenced homeowner debt-service ratios.
But unlike homeowners, renters over the past decade have been using a materially higher fraction of their incomes for payments on student loans and used-car debt. Renters tend to be younger and have lower incomes than homeowners, so the fact that student loans and used-car payments are a larger share of their income is not surprising.