Charts of the Day: China’s Household, Overall Debt-to-GDP Ratios Rise to a Record

Growth in China’s household debt as a percentage of nominal GDP was almost flat in the second quarter as plunging property sales curbed demand for mortgages, even as consumer and individual business loans jumped, a report by a state-backed think tank showed Tuesday.

The household leverage ratio stood at 63.5% at the end of June, the second straight quarterly increase, according to a report by the National Institution for Finance and Development (NIFD). Although that’s the highest in available data going back to the end of 1992, it was just 0.2 percentage points higher than at the end of the first quarter when it jumped 1.4 percentage points from the end of last year to 63.3% as the economy reopened after three years of Covid-19 controls.