Income per capita varied by 1 to 4 across EU countries - Issue number 35/2012 - Products Statistics in Focus

Household income, consumption and investment in the EU, Norway, Switzerland and the US in 2010

Household income per capita, corrected for price differentials among countries, varied substantially in Europe: in Luxembourg, Norway and Germany, it was more than 2.5 times higher than in Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia. In the US, income per capita was about 1/3rd above the euro area and EU averages. Between 2007 and 2010, the real gross adjusted disposable income decreased most in Latvia (-20%), Lithuania (-11%) and Greece (-11%), while the largest increases were recorded in Bulgaria (20.5%), Poland (12.4%) and Norway (12.3%). In the EU, the highest gross saving rates were recorded in Germany, Belgium, Slovenia and France (all above 15%);the lowest in Lithuania (1.2%) and Latvia (4.2%). Euro area (13.9%) and EU (12.1%) had higher gross saving rates than the US (9.7%). Households invested a higher proportion of their disposable income in the euro area (9.1%) and the EU (8.4%) than in the US (5.5%). Between 2007 and 2010, the financial crisis impacted on the investment rate mostly in Ireland (-17.7 pp), Estonia (-7.9 pp) and Spain (-5.9 pp).