Household debt and financial assets: evidence from Germany, Great Britain and the USA

an article by Sarah Brown and Karl Taylor (University of Sheffield) in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) Volume 171 Issue 3 (Page 615-643, June 2008)

Summary
The authors explore the determinants of debt, financial assets and net worth at the household level by using survey data for Germany, Great Britain and the USA. To identify which households are potentially vulnerable to adverse changes in the economic environment, they also explore the determinants of a range of measures of financial pressure:

• the probability that a household has negative net worth;
• the debt-to-income ratio;
• mortgage income gearing; and
• the saving-to-income ratio.

Their empirical findings suggest that the poorest and the youngest households are the most vulnerable to adverse changes in their financial circumstances.

Hazel's comment:
This could be considered the most contrived conjunction of posts I have ever achieved. Pure coincidence, I assure you, that the assessment of household finance comes immediately next to looking at the sustainability of economic welfare.
The former, this abstract, came in just today whilst the latter was several days old!