In 2022, the global non-financial sector debt surged to 3.1 times the GDP, reflecting the result of the reliance of various countries' real economic sectors on debt-driven economic growth since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. How does debt affect economic growth? This question has sparked numerous theoretical and empirical studies in academia. This article uses "debt" and "economic growth" as keywords or titles in both Chinese and English to retrieve literature from renowned academic databases such as CNKI and EBSCO ASP. Based on the collected literature, the article categorizes them into four types according to research themes. The article also focuses on the development and trends of research projects related to debt and economic growth funded by the Chinese National Social Science Fund over the past five years. Therefore, our work contributes to providing a systematic understanding of how non-financial sector debt influences economic growth at the macroeconomic level.