Nierówności dochodowe a zadłużenie gospodarstw domowych w krajach OECD w latach 1995–2014
Income inequality and household indebtedness in OECD countries over the period 1995–2014

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at evaluation of relationship between the level of income inequality and theextent of household sector indebtedness in the OECD countries over the period 1995–2014. Priorinvestigations of this issue were focused mainly on the U.S. economy and suggested that one ofthe reasons for a rapid surge in indebtedness of households was an increase of income disparitiesin the society. The present paper attempts to examine this phenomenon in a broader internationalcontext. The research was based on the data available in the OECD Statistics database and involvedanalyses of parametric and non-parametric correlations. The results indicate significant disparitiesin directions and strength of analysed relationships in the examined sample of countries. In themajority of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries an increase (decrease) of income inequalitywas accompanied by an increase (decrease) in the extent of household indebtedness, which is consistentwith the results of prior research. In the case of poorer but fastest developing economies,however, an opposite relationship was found. Statistically significant negative correlations occurredalso in several other developed economies. Hence, the results of the research do not allow to extendconclusions flowing from the prior studies on this matter onto the whole collectivity of developedcountries and indicate that changes in income disparities in particular economies do not affect theextent of household indebtedness unambiguously. Therefore it seems that direction and strength ofthis relationship may be determined by country-specific economic, social, demographic, psychologicalor cultural factors.

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