Household Debt in OECD Countries: The Role of Supply-Side and Demand-Side Factors

In many countries, household debt increased from the 1990s until the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and then stagnated with the Great Recession, the euro-area sovereign debt crisis and deleveraging. In spite of these common trends, differences in national household debt/disposable income ratios are evident. This paper studies the determinants of household debt using a dataset of 33 countries and taking into account both demand-side and supply-side factors. The econometric exercises, covering the period 1995–2016, yield the following results. First, there is a positive link between household debt and both household wealth and house price growth. Second, the quality of bankruptcy laws relates positively to household debt, whereas longer insolvency resolution times are associated with lower household debt. Third, Anglo-Saxon legal origin and Scandinavian legal origin have a stronger link with household debt than French and German legal origin. Fourth, household debt is higher in countries with social-democratic and liberal welfare models than in conservative and Eastern European welfare states. Fifth, the ratio of public debt to GDP displays a negative association with private debt. Last, the effect of saving on household debt is significant only in the years of household deleveraging, i.e. after the global financial crisis. While the effect of demand-side variables is unstable over time, supply-side variables appear to be more persistent in determining the level of household debt.