Studies of these effects have so far focused almost exclusively on the United States and their findings may not be applicable to the euro area, where countries are characterised by different tax/benefit systems and different institutions, and where households do not access financial markets in the same way.
We in the Eurosystem are aware of the need for more empirical research at the household level and, partly for this reason, we have been collecting such data. Our “Household Finance and Consumption Survey” (http://www.ecb.int/home/ html/researcher_hfcn.en.html) documents the extent of wealth heterogeneity and the structure of household balance sheets across the euro area member countries.