Zurück Impact of COVID-19 on household consumption and savings

10. November 2020

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In the second quarter of 2020, the EU household saving rate recorded its highest year-over-year increase since the time series began at +10.8 percentage points (pp).

The main reason behind this was a marked 17.3% year-on-year decline in household final consumption expenditure. This drop in household final consumption expenditure was in stark contrast with the decrease of 1.8% in the last quarter and recent increases in excess of 2%.

 

Year-over year change of household saving rate, consumption and income

Source datasets: nasq_10_ki and nasq_10_nf_tr

 

Compared with the second quarter of 2019, the household saving rate increased in all but one of the Member States (for which data are available) in the second quarter of 2020. Sweden was the only Member State where there was a decline (-0.6pp), while the highest year-over-year increase was observed for Ireland (+22.0 pp), followed by Spain (+13.7 pp).

 

Year-over-year change of household saving rate, consumption and income in Q2 2020

Source datasets: nasq_10_ki and nasq_10_nf_tr

 

The increase in the household saving rate in the majority of the countries with available data is mainly explained by the large decrease in household individual consumption expenditure. The largest decreases in household expenditure were observed for Spain (-23.9%) and Ireland (-22.8%), while the lowest decreases were noted in Czechia (-4.4%) and Denmark (-7.7%).

 

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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