Household Secured Debt

Abstract

Deteriorating household sector balance sheets were widely thought to have exacerbated the recession in the early 1990s. In recent years households have once more significantly increased their indebtedness; this has been matched in aggregate by an accumulation of financial assets. This article analyses homeowners' financial positions since the late 1980s using disaggregated data, to assess the extent to which debt may exert an important influence on the macroeconomy in the current conjuncture.