Inside Household Debt: Disentangling Mortgages and Consumer Credit, and Household and Bank Factors. Evidence from Italy

Massimiliano Affinito (), Raffaele Santioni () and Luca Tomassetti ()
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Massimiliano Affinito: Banca d’Italia
Raffaele Santioni: Banca d’Italia
Luca Tomassetti: Banca d’Italia

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, 2025, vol. 11, issue 2, No 12, 773-814

Abstract: Abstract This paper breaks down the debt of Italian households into its two main components (residential mortgages and consumer credit), and analyses both demand-side (household) and supply-side (bank) characteristics associated with the two types of borrowing, using granular data at bank and territorial (province) level. Our results show that household debt growth is related to both bank and household characteristics, and in different ways for mortgages and consumer loans. Mortgage growth is more strongly related to bank capital and household income unequal distribution, while consumer credit is more strongly related to bank profit components and household income levels. We find that the relationship between debt growth and accumulated debt is negative for both types of debt, which is a reassuring result as it reduces concerns about over-indebtedness risk, although we find that the effect is much larger for mortgages than for consumer credit, and tends to decline over time.

Keywords: Household debt; Supply and demand factors; Income level and distribution; Over-indebtedness; Education and financial literacy; Debt accumulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G01 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s40797-025-00319-4

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