What drives household credit in France?

Purpose

Who applies for credit, who is credit constrained and who receives credit refusal in France? To address these questions and explore the determinants of certain household credit aspects in France, we exploit a unique dataset from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) led by European Central Bank (ECB).

Design/methodology/approach

The anonymized dataset we utilize is based on the third survey wave (2017) and includes 13,555 French households. More specifically, considering a large number of household variables, associated with dimensions such as demographics, employment, income, wealth, assets and expenditures, we estimate three logit regression models, attempting to capture the factors that determine the underlying behavior of households.

Findings

We find that variables such as age, education, housing status, employment situation, wealth and evolution of expenses, play a key role and enter with high statistical significance in the estimated models. Our results are consistent with the existing body of literature, also offering further implications about the research questions we pose. Finally, we provide an elaborate discussion which meticulously clarifies the qualitative dimension of our findings.

Originality/value

To the best of our knowledge, no studies appear in the international literature, focusing on household credit in France, utilizing original data from the ECB.