BIS: High household debt kills growth | Macrobusiness

From Leith van Onselen, reproduced with kind permission from Macrobusiness:

Last month I showed how Australia’s ratio of household debt to GDP had hit 123% of GDP – the third highest in the world – according to data released by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS):

Martin North also compiled separate data from the BIS, which showed that Australia’s household debt servicing ratio (DSR) is also the third highest in the world:

Despite record low mortgage rates, Australia’s mortgage slaves are still sacrificing a far higher share of their income to pay mortgage interest (let alone principal) than when mortgage rates peaked in 1989-90:

Now the BIS has released a working paper, entitled “The real effects of household debt in the short and long run”, which shows that high household debt (as measured by debt to GDP) has a significant negative long-term impact on consumption and growth. Below are the key findings:

A 1 percentage point increase in the household debt-to-GDP ratio tends to lower growth in the long run by 0.1 percentage point. Our results suggest that the negative long-run effects on consumption tend to intensify as the household debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds 60%. For GDP growth, that intensification seems to occur when the ratio exceeds 80%.

Moreover, the negative correlation between household debt and consumption actually strengthens over time, following a surge in household borrowing. What is striking is that the negative correlation coefficient nearly doubles between the first and the fifth year following the increase in household debt.

As shown in the table above, Australia’s household debt-to-GDP ratio was 123% as at June 2016 (higher now) – way above the BIS’ 80% threshold by which GDP growth is adversely impacted.

According to Martin North:

This is explained by massive amounts of borrowing for housing (both owner occupied and investment) whilst unsecured personal debt is not growing. Such high household debt, even with low interest rates sucks spending from the economy, and is a brake on growth. The swelling value of home prices, and paper wealth (as well as growing bank balance sheets) do not really provide the right foundation for long term real sustainable growth.

Another obvious extrapolation is that there could be carnage when mortgage rates eventually rise from current historical lows.