In the second quarter of 2020, the EU household saving rate recorded its highest year-over-year increase since the time series began at +10.8 percentage points (pp), Eurostat reports.
The main reason behind this was a marked 17.3% year-on-year decline in household final consumption expenditure. This drop in household final consumption expenditure was in stark contrast with the decrease of 1.8% in the last quarter and recent increases in excess of 2%.
Compared with the second quarter of 2019, the household saving rate increased in all but one of the Member States (for which data are available) in the second quarter of 2020.
Sweden was the only Member State where there was a decline (-0.6pp), while the highest year-over-year increase was observed for Ireland (+22.0 pp), followed by Spain (+13.7 pp).
The increase in the household saving rate in the majority of the countries with available data is mainly explained by the large decrease in household individual consumption expenditure.
The largest decreases in household expenditure were observed for Spain (-23.9%) and Ireland (-22.8%), while the lowest decreases were noted in Czechia (-4.4%) and Denmark (-7.7%).