Question: Would there be a way to identify a ratio for debt to wage here on Long Island vs. the nation?

Yes! Debt is something that a lot of groups are interested in, including the government, and there’s data available on this topic.

This is something we plan on looking into more, but in the meantime, we can share other organizations that have already done this research.

As usual, we’d like to remind and encourage our readers to read up on their methodology and about sections for such studies – datasets often have limitations and understanding what those are is important as we move forward with our discussions.

Urban Institute’s Debt in America map

Urban Institute has an interactive map that shows county level debt for medical, auto loan and student debt. They seem to have kept it fairly updated, with the dates noted, and they have a decent amount of demographic data to help explain the context surrounding the debt.

You can take a look at the map here.

The Federal Reserve Debt-to-Income ratio map

This map shows median household debt and has historic data going back to 1999 to 2017.

Having historic data and being able to scrub through it is great for looking at trends. They have a relatively technical note that explains their methodology, and we highly recommend reading it.

They also have maps created for state and metropolitan area-level data, and you can take a look at them here.

Federal Reserve raw data

This is a trickier to navigate, but using this filter, you should be able to pick and select debt levels for different counties to compare. We’ve narrowed the filter to New York to begin with as that interface is not very user-friendly.

Let us know if you find anything interesting there, or have more questions about it.