The EU household saving rate continued with a large year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter of 2020, climbing +6.6 percentage points (pp) higher than it was one year ago.
The main reason for the year-on-year increase is that household final consumption expenditure was 7.0% lower in the EU than it was one year ago. Household gross disposable income was 0.6% higher in the fourth quarter of 2020 (compared with the fourth quarter of 2019).
Source datasets: nasq_10_ki and nasq_10_nf_tr
In all but one of the Member States for which data are available for the fourth quarter of 2020 the household saving rate was higher than it was one year ago. The highest year-on-year increase was observed for Slovenia (+20.8 pp), followed by Ireland (+12.8 pp), Belgium (+11.3 pp), Austria (+10.9 pp) and Greece (+10.4 pp). However, the household saving rate decreased in Denmark by -2.7 pp year-on-year.
Source datasets: nasq_10_ki and nasq_10_nf_tr
The increase in the household saving rate for the majority of countries was mainly explained by a large decrease in year-on-year household individual consumption expenditure. The largest decreases were observed in Slovenia and Spain (-15.4% and -11.2%). Denmark was the only country where household consumption increased (by +0.2%).
For more information:
- Read the Statistics Explained article on the impact of COVID-19 crisis on non-financial corporation and household accounts.
- 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.
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