Teaching Government Debt
Free lessons for high-school economics, civics and personal-finance classes, built on live figures.
Each lesson explains one idea in plain language, uses the current figures behind this site’s counters, and ends with a worksheet and an answer key that print on their own. Because the numbers update whenever the page loads, a worksheet printed today will have slightly different answers from one printed next month; each one shows the date its figures are from.
What Is Debt-to-GDP?Why a country that owes fewer dollars can be more indebted, with a worksheet built on live figures.About 20 minutes · worksheet and answer keyWhy Do Governments Borrow?Deficits, bonds and interest, with the US Treasury's own interest figures.About 25 minutes · worksheet and answer keyHow Fast Is Government Debt Growing?Reading a live debt clock: rates per second, per day and per person, and what a model leaves out.About 20 minutes · worksheet and answer key
How to use them
- Project the page and work through the questions together, or print the worksheet for students and the answer key for yourself.
- Every figure links back to a page with its source, so students can check where a number comes from. The methodology explains how the counters work, and the accuracy page shows how closely the US counter tracks the Treasury’s record.
- For a class website or learning platform, the live counter can be embedded with one line of HTML from the embed page. It sets no cookies and tracks nothing about your students.
Going further
- Debt to GDP for 194 countries, sortable and downloadable as a spreadsheet.
- The US national debt by year since 1790, from the Treasury’s own records.
- Why 90% isn’t a magic line, on whether any debt ratio is too high.
Figures as of November 9, 2026, from the IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2026) and the US Treasury, as used across this site. These lessons are free to use, copy and adapt under CC BY 4.0; please credit Global Debt Clock. No sign-up, and no ads on these pages. Suggestions: [email protected].