A microsimulation model to evaluate Italian households’ financial vulnerability

We build a microsimulation model to monitor the financial vulnerability of Italian households. Starting from household-level data from the Survey on Household Income and Wealth and matching them with macroeconomic forecasts on debt and income, we project the future path of households’ indebtedness and debt-service ratio. This allows us to assess households’ vulnerability at a higher frequency and in a more timely manner than by using household data alone. We find that the share of vulnerable households (defined as those with a debt-service ratio above 30 per cent and income below the median) over the total population is projected to be about stable between 2012 and 2014, with a slight decrease in 2015 due to positive income growth. Their debt is also projected to decrease in those years. Overall, we find that the dynamics of income growth are the main driver of households’ vulnerability.