UK households have not stopped saving to go on a debt-fuelled consumer spending spree, according to research from Royal London, despite official figures revealing the savings ratio is at a record-low.
The insurer's paper ‘Has Britain really stopped saving?' casts doubt on the meaning of the data supplied by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this year, and cautioned against policymakers jumping to the wrong conclusions. On 30 June, the ONS published figures that indicated household savings reached a record low, with Brits saving on average just 1.7% of their earnings. It said the household savings ratio fell from 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 1.7% in Q1 2017, having already started to decline in previous years. According to the paper, the Q1 2017 figure w...
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