[kibwen]

This feels a bit like damning with faint praise; the most likely cause of an emergency debt is a trip to the hospital, and the average deductible of a US employee on private health insurance is $1500 (closer to $3000 for family coverage).

(We don't need to bother considering people who don't have jobs and thus don't have insurance; the failure mode for them, as before, is "resign yourself to lifelong financial ruin and dodging debt collectors".)

So the question then is: what percentage of households can cover a $1500 emergency bill, rather than a mere $400 bill? And, at the rate of growth since 2013, how many decades will it take for that number to creep up to 50% (and don't forget to adjust for inflation).