Bad mortgage loans and rampant consumer debt were two of the primary causes for the recent economic recession in the U.S. Despite a national trend of debt problems, a University of Missouri researcher has found one American population that holds almost no consumer debt outside of typical home mortgages.
Rui Yao, an assistant professor of personal financial planning in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri, found that while 72 percent of Chinese-American households hold a mortgage, only five percent of those households have outstanding auto loans, and only three percent have any other type of consumer debt.
In her study, Yao surveyed Chinese-American households in ten Midwestern cities. Income levels of participants ranged from $4,000 to $1.4 million annually with an average income of $106,000. She found that despite a low overall rate of debt, Chinese-American households with higher incomes were more likely to have some type of consumer debt.
