The resulting drop in the average interest rate on household debt, combined with the lengthening maturity of this debt, has tempered the repayment obligation from the growing stock of debt. The Federal Reserve publishes two series that quantify this repayment obligation. The first series, the debt service ratio, measures the required payments on mortgage and consumer debt as a share of after-tax personal income.
2  See Brand et al. (2010), Gürkaynak et al. (2005), Kuttner and Posen (1999), Bibinger et al. (2013). 3  See Praet (2013) for a detailed exposition of this distinction. See also Campbell et al. (2012) for the taxonomy of “Odyssean” vs. “Delphic” forward guidance underlying this distinction.