Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented increase of household indebtedness in Poland. However, the process has not affected all groups of households equally. The group which is especially prone to going into debt are people who are forced by their low income to finance consumption with loans. The aim of this article is to examine the degree to which low-income consumers use loans. An attempt was made to identify factors which affect the probability of indebtedness. In addition, the loan repayment burden on low-income households was analysed. The author makes use of unidentifiable data collected during a study of household budgets in 2000, 2005 and 2010. In order to verify research problems, statistical poverty identification methods and regression modelling methods, with account taken of models for binomial quality variables, were applied.