Summary

DescriptionUSDebt.png	U.S. debt from 1940 to 2010. Red lines indicate the Debt Held by the Public (net public debt) and black lines indicate the Total Public Debt Outstanding (gross public debt), the difference being that the gross debt includes that held by the federal government itself. The second panel shows the two debt figures as a percentage of U.S. GDP (dollar value of U.S. economic production for that year). The top panel is deflated so every year is in 2010 dollars.
Date	10 March 2009
Source	United States Government Originally uploaded by O18 (talk) to en:Wikipedia (log).
Author	en:User:O18
Permission (Reusing this file)	This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 truetrue Category:CC-BY-SA-3.0#USDebt.png

Data sources

Data for 1940-2010 are available from the United States Government at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals archive copy at the Wayback Machine

• Debt (nominal and percentage of GDP): table 7.1
• Deflator (composite outlay deflator): table 1.3 or 10.1

Table description:

• year: fiscal year
• gross federal debt dollars: (nominal) gross federal debt (millions)
• total public dollars: (nominal) federal debt held by the public, ie, net of that held by federal govt (millions)
• deflator: composite outlay deflator (indexed to 2005)
• gross federal debt gdp: gross federal debt over fiscal year GDP (on same nominal/real basis)
• total public gdp: federal debt held by the public over fiscal year GDP (on same nominal/real basis)

Evidence against bias:

• the gross federal debt dollars series agrees well with the Oct, 23 AP report ("U.S. Debt Past $1 Trillion") that the debt first passed 1 Trillion dollars that day.
• The gross federal debt gdp in 2007 is the ratio of the nominal GDP from CIA fact book in 2007 over the nominal debt from table 7.1 in the reference.

Tabled data

This data tabled directly from the source (Presidents FY2012 budget). Note: deflators are applied when graphing in the code below, and it is deflated to the stated year (now 2010).

"year","gross.federal.debt.dollars","total.public.dollars","deflator","gross.federal.debt.gdp","total.public.gdp"
1940,50696,42772,0.0804,52.4,44.2
1941,57531,48223,0.0836,50.4,42.3
1942,79200,67753,0.0936,54.9,47.0
1943,142648,127766,0.1026,79.1,70.9
1944,204079,184796,0.0949,97.6,88.3
1945,260123,235182,0.0905,117.5,106.2
1946,270991,241861,0.0906,121.7,108.6
1947,257149,224339,0.1000,110.3,96.2
1948,252031,216270,0.1058,98.4,84.5
1949,252610,214322,0.1024,93.2,79.1
1950,256853,219023,0.1064,94.1,80.2
1951,255288,214326,0.1047,79.6,66.9
1952,259097,214758,0.1041,74.3,61.6
1953,265963,218383,0.1124,71.3,58.6
1954,270812,224499,0.1163,71.8,59.5
1955,274366,226616,0.1203,69.5,57.4
1956,272693,222156,0.1263,63.8,52.0
1957,272252,219320,0.1327,60.5,48.7
1958,279666,226336,0.1405,60.7,49.2
1959,287465,234701,0.1460,58.5,47.8
1960,290525,236840,0.1466,56.1,45.7
1961,292648,238357,0.1507,55.1,44.9
1962,302928,248010,0.1511,53.4,43.7
1963,310324,253978,0.1579,51.8,42.4
1964,316059,256849,0.1599,49.4,40.1
1965,322318,260778,0.1620,46.9,38.0
1966,328498,263714,0.1658,43.6,35.0
1967,340445,266626,0.1700,41.9,32.8
1968,368685,289545,0.1765,42.5,33.4
1969,365769,278108,0.1881,38.6,29.3
1970,380921,283198,0.1991,37.6,28.0
1971,408176,303037,0.2133,37.8,28.1
1972,435936,322377,0.2283,37.0,27.4
1973,466291,340910,0.2412,35.7,26.1
1974,483893,343699,0.2621,33.6,23.9
1975,541925,394700,0.2889,34.7,25.3
1976,628970,477404,0.3117,36.2,27.5
1977,706398,549104,0.3371,35.8,27.8
1978,776602,607126,0.3588,35.0,27.4
1979,829467,640306,0.3902,33.2,25.6
1980,909041,711923,0.4318,33.3,26.1
1981,994828,789410,0.4789,32.6,25.8
1982,1137315,924575,0.5136,35.2,28.6
1983,1371660,1137268,0.5393,39.9,33.1
1984,1564586,1306975,0.5675,40.7,34.0
1985,1817423,1507260,0.5868,43.9,36.4
1986,2120501,1740623,0.6020,48.1,39.5
1987,2345956,1889753,0.6210,50.5,40.6
1988,2601104,2051616,0.6398,51.9,41.0
1989,2867800,2190716,0.6634,53.1,40.6
1990,3206290,2411558,0.6840,55.9,42.1
1991,3598178,2688999,0.7162,60.7,45.3
1992,4001787,2999737,0.7436,64.1,48.1
1993,4351044,3248396,0.7637,66.1,49.3
1994,4643307,3433065,0.7780,66.6,49.2
1995,4920586,3604378,0.7992,67.0,49.1
1996,5181465,3734073,0.8184,67.1,48.4
1997,5369206,3772344,0.8356,65.4,45.9
1998,5478189,3721099,0.8436,63.2,43.0
1999,5605523,3632363,0.8554,60.9,39.4
2000,5628700,3409804,0.8767,57.3,34.7
2001,5769881,3319615,0.8988,56.4,32.5
2002,6198401,3540427,0.9135,58.8,33.6
2003,6760014,3913443,0.9375,61.6,35.6
2004,7354673,4295544,0.9644,62.9,36.8
2005,7905316,4592229,1.0000,63.6,36.9
2006,8451350,4828972,1.0354,64.0,36.6
2007,8950744,5035129,1.0642,64.6,36.3
2008,9986082,5803050,1.1031,69.7,40.5
2009,11875851,7544707,1.1085,85.2,54.1
2010,13528807,9018941,1.1218,94.2,62.8
2011,14764222,10128206,1.1525,98.7,67.7
2012,16050921,11281131,1.175343,100.1,70.4
2013,16719434,11982713,1.190529,101.2,72.6
2014,17794483,12779899,1.208930,103.3,74.2
2015,18120106,13116692,1.216690,101.2,73.3
2016,19539445,14167725,1.226666,106.1,77.0

July 29, 2021 Comprehensive revision: debt from U.S. Treasury website, GDP and deflators from BEA table, Debt/GDP ratio calculated from foregoing

Program

The image was made with R using the following code after setting the working directory properly.

#setwd("~/")  # <- you have to change this to a folder on your computer
dat <- read.csv("debt.txt") # <- you have to put the above data as debt.txt in the folder
bitmap(file="USDebt.png",type="png256",width=6,height=7,res=300,pointsize=14)
par(mfrow=c(2,1))
par(mar=c(2,3.5,0.1,1))
par(las=1)
par(yaxs="i")
par(mgp=c(2.1,0.6,0))
dat$deflator <- dat$deflator / dat$deflator[dat$year==2010]
plot(range(dat$year),range(1.04 * c(0,dat$gross.federal.debt.dollars/dat$deflator/1e6)),type="n",xlab="debt",ylab="debt (trillions of 2010 dollars)",lwd=3)
lines(dat$year,dat$gross.federal.debt.dollars/dat$deflator/1e6,lwd=3)


lines(dat$year,dat$total.public.dollars/dat$deflator/1e6,type="l",col="red",lwd=3)
legend("topleft",lwd=3,col=c("black","red"),legend=c("gross debt","public debt"),bty="n")
par(mar=c(2,3.5,0.1,1))
plot(range(dat$year),range(1.04 * c(0,dat$gross.federal.debt.gdp,dat$total.public.gdp)),type="n",xlab="year",ylab="debt as a % of gdp")
lines(dat$year,dat$gross.federal.debt.gdp,type="l",lwd=3)
lines(dat$year,dat$total.public.gdp,type="l",col="red",lwd=3)
dev.off()