The IFC Bulletins contain proceedings of meetings of the Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics. Papers in this volume were prepared for the Irving Fisher Committee Conference on “Measuring the financial position of the household sector” held at the Bank for International Settlements on 30-31 August 2006. The views expressed are those of the respective contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IFC, the BIS, the central banks or other institutions represented at the meeting. Individual papers (or excerpts thereof) may be reproduced or translated with the authorisation of the authors concerned.
Summary of conference discussion
The household sector is becoming more important for central banks as a result of a number of factors. Households, together with non-financial corporations, are the key drivers of the economy. In addition, households and financial markets are becoming increasingly dependent upon each other as households attempt to improve the smoothing of their consumption across their lifetime and as financial markets develop services to facilitate this. The conference discussed the interaction between households and financial markets and agreed that a sound analytical framework is required to measure the financial position of the household sector.
It was also recognised that central banks need to have access to data for this sector that are timely, methodologically consistent, and comprehensive. It was felt that financial and national accounts data provide, in principle, a full coverage to assess the financial position of households, in terms of flows as well as stocks. They also provide information on the interaction between the household sector and the financial system more generally. At the same time, there is a need for more detailed information on household assets (wealth) and liabilities (debt), including on their distribution across income categories. Moreover, sample surveys are increasingly being used to gather information on specific financial transactions and positions of households. With respect to cross-border financial transactions involving the household sector, remittances have become important in many countries. As a consequence questions have arisen on which international methodological standards to use when compiling data on remittances.