Economic sociologists who study debt and lending focus on the role that these practices play in shaping our daily lives as well as our larger, macro-scale social systems. Which people and groups are more likely to be in debt? Who benefits from debt and lending and in what ways? Why have practices of lending and taking on debt become more commonplace, impacting everything from college tuition to home-buying? How has this increase in debt and lending shaped overall levels of inequality? These are some of the questions that economic sociologists who study debt and lending try to answer. Some economic sociologists also start from the assumption that we are all always engaged in debt and lending insofar as we rely on one another to live: debt and credit are relational (i.e., they exist between at least two people) and so all of us engage in debt and lending in our day-to-day lives.