In 1998, the wealthiest 1 percent of households had an average net worth 167 times that of households in the middle 20 percent. But the average debt held by the top 1 percent was only six times as great as that of their middle-class cousins. Home sweet home. These days hardly any asset is off-limits for raiding. Across the nation, the amount of home equity is shrinking as more families smash the piggy banks they live in to finance their lifestyles, businesses, or other debt.
Pension plans are another story.
Borrowing from them more than doubled between 1992 and 1998. Corporations haven't been any more frugal. For most of the past decade, sky-high equity prices made it easy to borrow against corporate assets. Many companies used borrowed funds to buy other companies or their own shares. That bumped up business debt in relation to the overall economy nearly to its level in the heyday of junk bonds.