Household Wealth in Italy in 2013Supplements to the Statistical Bulletin - Monetary and Financial Indicators

At the end of 2013 Italian households’ net wealth amounted to €8,728 billion, corresponding to an average of €144,000 per person and €356,000 per household. Real assets accounted for 60 per cent of total wealth, financial assets for the remaining 40 per cent. Liabilities amounting to under €900 billion accounted for just over 9 per cent of total assets.

In 2013 total net wealth was down by 1.4 per cent at constant prices from a year earlier; the 3.5 per cent decline in the value of real assets, due to the 5.1 per cent fall in house prices, was only partly offset by an increase of 2.1 per cent in financial assets and a reduction of 1.1 per cent in liabilities. In real terms (using the consumption deflator) net wealth fell by 1.7 per cent. The cumulative decline at constant prices since the end of 2007 came to 8 per cent.

According to preliminary estimates, in the first half of 2014 Italian households’ net wealth diminished by a further 1.2 per cent in nominal terms with respect to December 2013.

At the end of 2013 Italian household wealth in the form of housing exceeded €4,900 billion, down by 4.1 per cent from a year earlier (-4.4 per cent in real terms).

Notwithstanding the decline in recent years, Italian households’ net wealth is high by international standards. In 2012 it was equal to 8 times gross disposable income, comparable to the ratio in France, Japan and the United Kingdom and higher than in the United States, Germany and Canada. Real assets were equal to 5.4 times gross disposable income, a ratio second only to that for French households. Although it has increased significantly in the past decade, the level of household debt in Italy is relatively low at 81 per cent of disposable income.

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