Although the EU household saving rate decreased in the third quarter of 2020, it was still +4.5 percentage points (pp) higher than it was one year ago.
The main reason for the year-on-year increase is that the household final consumption expenditure was still 3.6% lower in the EU than it was one year ago. Household gross disposable income recovered and was 1.5% higher in the third quarter of 2020 (compared with the third quarter of 2019).
Source datasets: nasq_10_ki and nasq_10_nf_tr
Compared with the third quarter of 2019, the household saving rate increased in all Member States (for which data are available) in the third quarter of 2020. The highest year-on-year increase was observed for the Netherlands (+7.9 pp), followed by Denmark (+7.7 pp).
Source datasets: nasq_10_ki and nasq_10_nf_tr
In most of the countries, however, the year-on-year increase was lower than it was the previous quarter. This is because household individual consumption expenditure recovered from the previous quarter, though it was still lower than it was one year ago in all Member States but two (Poland +3.8% and Portugal +0.2%). The largest year-on-year decreases in household consumption were observed in Spain (-8.5%) and Italy (-7.4%).
For more information on the impact of COVID-19 crisis on non-financial corporation and household accounts, you can read this Statistics Explained article.
Notes:
- Member States whose GDP is below 1% of the GDP of the EU27 do not have a legal obligation to send quarterly data for households and non-financial corporations to Eurostat.
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
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