The connection between household savings ratio and human development index : Which factors affect the household savings ratio?

This thesis investigates which factors affecting savings behavior by using a fixed effect regression model. To see what affects the household savings rate the following independent variables is considered: Natural logarithm of trend per capita income, natural logarithm of deviation from trend per capita income, growth of disposable income, real interest rate, inflation, wealth in relation to household disposable income, foreign savings in relation to disposable income, dependency ratio and human development index. To see whether changes of human development within a county impacts the household´s savings ratio this variables was included in a separate regression. To avoid possible biasedness from ordinary least square, a panel data technique called fixed effect regression model is used. The investigated time period is between year 1999 and 2016 and to make a restriction, variables from 25 developed countries were studied. The involved economic theories in this work are Keynesianism, permanent income hypothesis and the savings theory behind Maslow´s behavioral pyramid. The result made by using this study is that growth in income and foreign savings in relation to disposable income is insignificant and can´t be used in explaining the differences between household´s savings. Human development index within a country has a negative effect on the savings ratio but a conclusion regarding whether changes in HDI´s does affect savings can´t be made and more research within that field is needed