This article discusses the significance of the recent growth in household credit across a range of middle-income economies. This growth is understood primarily as a result of policy, including the promotion of individual borrowing as a means to fund access to housing, education and health. A formal model of credit extension and allocation is developed, establishing that consumption lending makes a comparatively stronger contribution to aggregate profitability as well as financial fragility than production lending. Consumption lending may be understood to create distinctive endogenous tendencies to credit-market instability. The findings point to the need for a critical reconsideration of reliance on this lending for social and macroeconomic policy.