Middle/upper class hold a higher nominal value. Lower class tends to hold a higher debt level to their income, and it tends to be in high interest revolvers such as credit cards which are almost impossible to pay off if all you can afford is to make the bare minimum monthly payment.
The upper/middle classes hold more debt overall, but it's debt that's much easier to shed - mortgages. You can just walk away from that mortgage at any time. The lower classes are saddled with medical debt, credit card debt, and student loans which aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.
> The highest-income 40 percent of households (those with incomes above $74,000) owe almost 60 percent of the outstanding education debt and make almost three-quarters of the payments. The lowest-income 40 percent of households hold just under 20 percent of the outstanding debt and make only 10 percent of the payments.
Also, medical and credit card debt can generally be discharged in bankruptcy. Student loan debt can't, but consider this from the same link:
> What may be more surprising, however, is the difference in payment burdens. A growing share of borrowers participate in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, which do not require any payments from those whose incomes are too low and limit payments to an affordable share of income for others. And some borrowers are in forbearance or deferment because of financial hardships. As a result, out-of-pocket loan payments are concentrated among high-income households; few low-income households enrolled in IDR are required to make payments.
If you look at it by state, you can draw a north south line from the western boundary of Texas to the western boundary of North Dakota. West of that line is debt; east of that line (until you hit the coast) its better.
Running it from 1999 to present is also kind of interesting.
> With respect to the long-term rise in household debt: This is a monetary phe- nomenon. Fundamentally, it is the result of higher interest rates and lower real income growth and inflation. On the other side of the equation, increasing income inequality has simply led to an increase in private consumption inequality. To the extent that consumption demand has been stronger than would be predicted by a Keynesian story of consumption propensities declining with income, the ex- planations appear to be a mix of increased luxury consumption by high-income households and and increased social spending classified as household consumption in the national accounts. Income inequality may indeed have contributed to weaker aggregate demand. But so may a number of other factors affecting desired consump- tion and investment, including: the progressive satiation of consumption demand; slowing population growth; increasing monopoly power; the shift from manufac- turing to less capital-intensive services; changes in the fraction of profits retained in the business sector; the trade deficit; and increased longevity of capital goods. The possible influences of all these factors, along with countervailing forces tending to raise aggregate demand, need to be investigated systematically we should not immediately focus on one possible story to the exclusion of the others.
Page 28 appears to have the line item you're after:
> Household debt is concentrated near the top of the income distribution; very little is owed by lower-income households.
