An annual survey of consumers has found that 40% of U.S.
households report “good” or “excellent” progress in meeting savings goals.
Which means 60% of household are not satisfied with their
current saving rates. The overall respond to the survey is not so good, only about
50% of people have “sufficient” saving.
Although, about half consumers are short in saving in some
way, the majority of them are able to save some of their income. Around 70% of consumers
are able to saving at least something each month, and cover those potential
emergency expenses.
I looked up the “Household
and non-profit institutions serving households net saving ratio” for several
countries, the result turns out inconsistent with this article. Japanese save about 2.422%
of their income, whereas American save about 4.873%. This inconsistency might
due to make assumption without any research.
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Switzerland
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17.824
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Germany
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9.548
|
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Euro area (15 countries)
|
6.543
|
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United States
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4.873
|
|
Canada
|
4.104
|
|
Japan
|
2.422
|
Data source: (http://stats.oecd.org)
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/survey-suggests-consumers-struggle-to-save-022416.html
I am actually a little surprised that the US has a 4% savings rate. I would not have thought it would have grown that much. Much of this increase I am guessing however is due to the 2008 crisis and the lack of the economy to completely bounce back from it 8 years later. I think in the future this number will only continue to increase if the economy does not continue to recover at a faster rate. With the growing uncertainty and talk of negative interest rates at the current time, it only makes sense that people are saving more money than they did before in order to compensate for this uncertainty. Even if the economy is able to return to normal rates, it would be wise of the US to continue to save, since the US tends to spend a lot of money especially in good times.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason the economy grew so quickly was due not only to savings but because our steady state had lowered because of the recession in 2008 leading to more rapid growth as the steady state will grow more quickly at lower income levels.
ReplyDeleteSeeing Switzerland's savings so high speaks to one of the reasons they hang such a stellar economy. We talked about in class about how increased saving can result in increased investment. Of course ultimately the important factor is our level of technology to move us forward to do things more efficiently. It's interesting to ask people how satisfied they are with their savings. It seems like it could be a very subjective response about how people define what good or excellent savings is vs. mediocre or not so great.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting article. I agree with what Sam has to say. This is a prime example of what we discussed in class about how an increase in saving can bring an increase in investment. I don't think we can compare the saving rates for the countries because although they are developed countries their policies, exchange rates and future speculations may be different that cause the consumers of these countries to save accordingly. The increase in saving rates for the United States can be attributed to the 2008 crisis that made the people loose trust in the economy and save for "rainy days"
ReplyDelete