가계부채의 용도별 보유현황 및 결정요인에 관한 연구

Abstract

According to the Bank of Korea, the nation’s household debts surged to an all-time high of 697 trillion won in the second quarter of 2009. Although borrowing behavior is a useful management means to smooth out the consumption span over the life time or to increase household wealth, it can cause severe financial problems such as late payment or being deep in debt. Thus household debt is a matter of concern of policy makers or financial planners. Households might borrow for many purposes. The purposes of borrowing are strongly related with household need and they can show some financial problems. Therefore, the study on the purposes of debt can give meaningful implications for making useful policies and financial counseling for the households using debts. Previous studies that were interested on several types of debt tended to classify debts based on debt sources or requirement of security. The absence of the analysis on the debt types of different purposes was resulted mainly because of lack of reliable national data. Recently,Statistics Korea started the survey on household wealth. The 2006 Survey of Household gives the information on the household debt types and their purposes. Utilizing this survey, this study investigated household debts focusing on the purposes of borrowing. The first objective of this study was to estimate the holding and the amount of different types of debt classified by debt purposes. Second objective was to find out the determinants of the likelihood of debt holding of different purposes. Largely household debts were classified into two groups, i.e. debt for consumption and debt for increasing assets. In detail, they were classified into 11 types. Consumption purpose debts were debt for daily expense, debt for educational expense, debt for medical expense,debt for wedding expense and debt for repaying debt. Debts for increasing assets were groupedinto debt for buying house, debt for renting, debt for buying automobile, deposit of renting house, and debt for security investment. The remaining type of debt was labeled as debt for others. The likelihood of holding of each type of debts was assumed to be influenced by sociodemographic variables and economic variables. Based on the previous studies, household heads’ sex, age, educational level, marital status and occupation, family size, home ownership, household income, real assets and financial assets were included for the analysis. Logit analysis was conducted as a statistical method. Total sample of 8,275 households was analyzed using SPSS. The major findings were as follows. First, the proportion of households with positive debt outstanding was 85.2%. The average amount of total debt was 36,390,000 won for the entire households and 42,730,000 won for the households that hold debts. The amount is almost equivalent to household annual income. This result shows that borrowing is a common financial management behavior. Second, the most frequently used debt was debt for daily expenses. The percentage of households which hold this type of debt was 71.4%. The debt type of the biggest amount was deposit of renting house. The types of debts could be re-grouped into four categories by the rate of holding and average amount. The debts with high rate of holding and larger amount were debt for buying house and deposit of renting house. The debts with high rate of holding but relatively small amount were debt for daily expense, debt for renting and others. The debts of low rate of holding but large amount were debt for repaying debt, debt for wedding expense and debt for security investment. The type of debt of low holding rate and small amount included debt for educational expense, debt for medical expense and debt for buying automobile. Third, household tended to utilize 2 types of debt on average. The proportion of the households using 2 types of debts was 33.1% and that of the households holding at least 3 types of debts was 23%. The number of debt purposes was influenced by household heads’ age, educational level, marital status and occupation, family size, home ownership, household income, real assets and financial assets. Especially the effect of age of head was the strongest. This result shows that debts tend to be utilized for multiple purposes. Fourth, the likelihoods of debt holding of different purposes were influenced by sex, age, educational level, marital status and occupation of household head, family size, home ownership,household income, real assets and financial assets. The effects of each variable were partly similar, but some effects were different according to each type of debt in terms of significance or directions. The effect of household income was the strongest and relatively consistent. It had influence on the holding of 10 types of debts. household head’s occupation was the determinant of 9 types of debts. Marital status was the weakest factor affecting the holding of debt of different types. Based on the results, it was concluded that the households are using debt for different purposes and usually for multiple purposes. The purposes of debt are different according to many variables and therefore the policy makers and financial planners should consider the household characteristics to make appropriate policies, educational programs or counseling.