Is the Rising US Debt Sustainable: An Analysis of Primary Balance, Economic Growth, and Real Interest Rate

Abstract The rising US debt has been a concern for a long time, but the United States is not the only country with a long history of debt. Almost every country in the world, advanced and developing, has a debt history, but it is the size of the debt and the rate at which it has been growing that has increasingly become a concern, raising questions about its sustainability. Recent CBO projections have also raised similar concerns about the rising US debt. This paper examines the question of US debt sustainability, based on an established model of debt sustainability, with a limited range of realistic assumptions.