Household Debt Variations

In the years leading up to the financial crisis, household debt soared in most rich countries. There were a couple of notable exceptions: Germany and Japan, neither of which experienced a housing boom that caused debt to accumulate. 

The ratio of debt to disposable income rose by an average of 30 percentage points, to 130%, in OECD countries between pre-boom 2000 and pre-crisis 2007. Since then debt levels have fallen in America, Britain and Germany, but they have continued to rise in countries such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, where property prices are still declining. In 2012 household debt in the Netherlands was a whopping 285% of disposable income.