Over-indebtedness in Europe: The relevance of country-level variables for the over-indebtedness of private households

So far, research on the causes of over-indebtedness in Europe has predominantly focused on the characteristics of individuals or households. This article investigates to what extent country-level factors are associated with a European household’s risk of being over-indebted. We examine variables that reflect policies aimed at combating over-indebtedness (the average level of economic literacy prevalent within a country and its classification into a specific debt-discharge regime) and variables that reflect other welfarestate policies (a country’s affiliation to a specific employment regime and a summary measure referring to the net replacement rate in the case of long-term unemployment). The results, which are based on multilevel logistic regression analyses of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EUSILC) data for 27 European countries, suggest that all four country-level factors matter. This particularly applies to the variables reflecting other welfare-state policies, thus underlining the relevance of the design of social policy in fighting over-indebtedness.