Maintaining sales growth for these products depends on a growing class of people with sufficient disposable household income.
Double-digit house price inflation has been caused by a combination of low interest rates, relatively high disposable household income and the popularity of property as an investment when stock markets have performed poorly.
The Nikkei article cites calculations by Daiwa Research Institute of household disposable income.
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Official statistics published last week showed that real household disposable income in the first three months of 2011 fell 0.8% compared with the previous three months.
Total household disposable income in 2008 is estimated to be Rmb23.2 tn, Rmb9.3 tn higher than the Rmb14 tn calculated based on the official NBS household income survey and Rmb5.4 tn higher than the Rmb17.9 tn total calculated by the Flow of Funds (FOF) accounts in the Economic Census This Rmb5.4 tn is referred to as grey income.
The ratio of household debt to disposable income in Australia was 158 percent, at the end of the first quarter.
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McKinsey makes the striking claim that "the ratio of UK household debt to disposable income would not return to its pre-bubble trend for up to a decade" - which implies that as we in the UK look for a return to more normal levels of economic growth, momentum is not going to be provided by consumer spending for perhaps up to 10 years.
Peter Hooper and Torsten Slok of Deutsche Bank reckon that if saving stays at about 6% of income, write-offs remain near today's elevated level and household income rises by 4.5% a year, household debt will fall from 126% of disposable income now to around 85%, where it was in the early 1990s, by 2013 (see chart 3).
With household debt still at 129% of disposable income, deleveraging could go on for some time.
Household debt now amounts to 150% of disposable income, up from 110% in 2000.
Chinese household saving, at around 25% of disposable income, is astonishingly high by international standards.
Since 1995, household debt has increased from 92% of disposable income to more than 160%.
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Since 2000 household debt has soared from 110% of disposable income to 160%.
Household debt reached more than 120% of disposable income in UK, Canada, the US and Japan by the time the financial crisis struck in 2008.
Total interest payments on household debt in Britain fell to 7% of disposable income at the end of last year, the lowest level since 2003.
With household debts equivalent to a high 160% of disposable income, and with shoppers' spending power being reduced by inflationary pressures greater than we've seen for 20 years, consumers are cutting back on all but essential purchases.
As a result, the household saving rate is now a negative 2% of disposable income.
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Household savings fell to only 3.8% of personal disposable income last year, down from 6.2% in 1992.
Furthermore, household debt has risen under Labour from about 100% of disposable income to a record 140%.
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The increase in household debt (mostly mortgage finance) from 85% of disposable income in 1996 to an estimated 140% at the end of last year, has also been more dramatic than in America or Britain.
Overall household debt has been rising sharply to 89% of disposable income in late 1996, compared with 67% in 1980.
As for a huge element of that indebtedness, household debt, that's fallen from around 180% of disposable income in 2008 to nearer 160%.
For instance, in France and Germany, household shareholdings are equivalent to less than 20% of their annual disposable income, compared with 100% in America and 65% in Britain.
The data point most utilized by those who espouse the idea of a healthy consumer is the household debt service ratio (DSR), a metric that relates debt payments to disposable personal income.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, spending by households on many of modern life's "basics" food at home, automobiles, clothing and footwear, household furnishings and equipment, and housing and utilities fell from 53% of disposable income in 1950 to 44% in 1970 to 32% today.
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