[ad_1]
The sharp rise in deposits and the fall in debt brought the net worth of households to a record 817,000 million euros in the second quarter of this year, according to figures from the Central Bank.
The effect of the pandemic’s initial restrictions, in which households saved significant savings on deposits, contributed to an increase of € 21.6 billion in financial assets over the three-month period.
The general resilience of the property market during the quarter kept property assets relatively stable at € 542 billion.
As households continued to pay their debts, household liabilities fell € 1.4 billion to € 143 billion.
Household debt is down by more than a third from the peak of € 202 billion in mid-2008, according to the regulator.
The general effect was that the net worth increased to 166,051 euros per person in the country in June of this year.
However, the increase in the value of homes was not uniform.
Unemployment rose to 5.2% in June and total salary fell by 2.1 billion euros in the quarter, as large numbers of people were laid off due to the pandemic.
There was an increase of 4.4 billion euros in social transfers, largely explained by the pandemic unemployment payment (PUP), and subsidies, the temporary wage subsidy scheme (TWSS), in the three-month period.
These ‘contrary movements’, together with a drop in consumption close to 6,000 million euros, attenuated the impact of unemployment and the fall in wages in the quarter, the study concludes.
[ad_2]