Exploring Differences in Household Debt Across the United States and Euro Area Countries

Dimitris Christelis, Michael Ehrmann and Dimitris Georgarakos

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: Household debt has played a central role in the global financial crisis, yet our understanding of it remains limited. We put U.S. household leverage in an international perspective, using household-level data for the United States and ten euro area economies. U.S. households have the highest prevalence of collateralized and non-collateralized debt, hold comparatively large amounts, and face higher debt-service burdens despite having higher income. We find that the U.S. economic environment is more conducive to holding debt, primarily because a given level of collateral is associated with higher prevalence and larger amounts of collateralized debt in the United States.

Keywords: household debt; debt burden; household finance; counterfactual decompositions. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 E21 G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Exploring Differences in Household Debt across the United States and Euro Area Countries (2021)
Working Paper: Exploring Differences in Household Debt Across the United States and Euro Area Countries (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:465

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