Determinants of household debt in the European Union countries

• Autor(a) principal: Tomás, Inês Maria Moreira
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/20981
• topic: Households’ indebtedness; European Union; Panel data; Dívida das famílias; União Europeia; Dados em painel

Households’ indebtedness in the European Union countries has increasing, showing greater emphasis until the financial crisis in 2007-2008. Many of these countries showed lower values after this period, however, still high when compared to the pre-crisis period. Thus, this dissertation empirically tests the determinants of households’ indebtedness in the 28 countries of the European Union for the period between 1995 and 2017. This is an econometric analysis using panel data. The seven hypotheses tested, taking into account the available literature on this topic, are house prices, financial asset prices, personal income inequality, households’ labour income, welfare state expenditures, working-age population and interest rates. The results obtained show that house prices, household’s labour income, welfare state expenditures and interest rates have a positive effect on households’ indebtedness. On the other hand, the financial asset prices and personal income inequality have a negative influence on households’ indebtedness.