The Household Finance Landscape in Emerging Economies

Abstract

We survey the household finance landscape in emerging economies. We first present statistics on household balance sheets from official micro-surveys in countries comprising 45% of the global population: China, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Thailand, and South Africa. We contrast these patterns with those in data from advanced economies. We then survey the nascent literature on household finance in emerging economies, and discuss areas of overlap with the more well-established literature on household finance in advanced economies, as well as the large body of literature on development finance. We highlight useful directions for future research.

Keywords: household finance, real estate, development, credit, insurance, emerging economies

JEL Classification: D1, G00