The Financial Position of Irish Households

Martina Lawless, Reamonn Lydon () and Tara McIndoe-Calder ()

Quarterly Bulletin Articles, 2015, 66-89

Abstract: This paper introduces a novel dataset on households’ income, assets and debts in Ireland: the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The HFCS is an invaluable resource for policy makers, allowing for household-level analysis of the composition of wealth and debt, leverage and the debt-service burden. Highlights include: the household main residence accounts for the majority of most households’ gross wealth (48 per cent on average); financial assets account for a much smaller proportion of gross wealth on average (13 per cent); more than half of households hold some form of debt, with mortgage indebtedness proving to be a particularly heavy burden for younger cohorts; however, the mortgage repayment burden is more evenly spread across the age distribution, with younger borrowers benefiting from low interest rates and long mortgage terms; the median value of net wealth is €105,000, in line with other Euro area countries (€109,000); the top 20 per cent of households hold 70 per cent of net assets – again, similar to the Euro area as whole; in Ireland, the concentration of wealth at the top end of the distribution is driven by two factors: larger holdings of real assets and relatively smaller holdings of debt.

Date: 2015-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cbi:qtbart:y:2015:m:01:p:66-89

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