In 2020, the interest on the national debt was $499 billion. This amounted to 14% of federal revenues, $3,881 for every household in the nation, and 5.8 times federal spending on Food Stamps. As a portion of federal revenues, interest on the national debt is now lower than its historical average, even though the national debt is currently higher than it has ever been. This is because the current interest rate on the debt is less than half of its historical average. This low interest rate has been driven by factors like Federal Reserve policies, which may cause effects like inflation and redistributing wealth from middle-income households to wealthy ones. The Congressional Budget Office "anticipates" that interest payments on the national debt "will increase considerably as interest rates return to more typical levels."