Various researchers are indicated that government debt may both stimulate and inhibit state’s economic development, although Ricardian economists argue, that debt does not affect economics at all. The goal of the present research is to explore correlations between debt and long-term economic growth, as well as estimate world tendencies in the accumulation of government debt. The paper is based on the analysis of public data on 178 countries, extracted from IMF and World Bank databases. The findings demonstrate that values of the government debt, expressed as % of GDP, decrease for the whole world, but increase for developed countries. The value of debt does not correlate with the growth rate worldwide, besides in Western Europe higher debt levels are associated with lower growth, but in South and East Asia region higher debt is related to higher growth.