Total student loan debt outstanding

As total US student loan debt has grown from alarming to existential, choking deaths on food have risen in near-perfect sympathy, a correlation of 0.995 that connects the financial and the fatal with the precision of two crises that share a nation but not a mechanism. The debt suffocates, the food suffocates, and the chart makes no distinction between metaphorical and literal asphyxiation. Both numbers go up every year. Neither shows signs of stopping.

Student loan debt grew from about 500 billion to over 1.75 trillion between 2005 and 2021, on a monotonic upward curve driven by rising tuition, increased borrowing, and slow repayment. Choking deaths rose as the population aged. Both metrics are perfectly monotonic across seventeen years, and the correlation is a mathematical certainty when two smooth upward curves share a period. The borrowers and the choking victims are entirely different demographics—students in their twenties and elderly in their seventies—but the chart cannot see demographics. It can only see the identical upward shape.

A correlation of 0.995 between student debt and choking deaths is a number that should appear in every statistics textbook as Exhibit A of why correlation is not causation. The debt compounds, the elderly age, and the chart draws a perfect line through both. The loans are outstanding. The correlation is outstanding. Neither is cause for celebration.