Household Savings in the Mirror of National and Aggregate Transfer Accounts

Population and Economics. 2024. Vol. 8. No. 2. P. 36–55.

Nazarova A. G.

The article examines the changes in the Russian population’s propensity to save in 2011-2020 in the context of national (SNA) and transfer (NTA) accounts. The calculation of the Households Savings value on a gross and net basis is methodologically consistent with the National Transfer Accounts Manual, the System of National Accounts 2008, and the official Rosstat statistical methodology for constructing non-financial accounts of the Household sector in the System of National Accounts of the Russian Federation. Structural changes in households’ savings were studied from three perspectives: against the background of the economy’s savings, changes in the volume of public transfers to the private sector, and conclusions from international studies on NTA. The construction of the balance sheet of the Households sector’s savings and accumulation (according to the SNA data) and the system of aggregate transfer accounts yielded the following results. From 2011 to 2020, the population provided between 1/5 and 1/3 of the total gross saving of the Russian economy. The Households sector acted as a net creditor to other institutional sectors of the SNA (including the Rest of the World sector), providing them with resources saved but not used for accumulation amounting to 1.0-6.0% of GDP. This study confirms that there is a direct correlation between changes in the volume of income saved by the population and changes in life cycle and public reallocation accounts estimates. The analysis of the Russian economy shows that the households’ saving rate was steadily low, comprising about 6.2% of disposable income on average, amidst significant public benefits. These findings match the results of cross-country comparative studies on developed economies made in the context of NTA.

Keywords: households, national accounts, национальные счета, домашние хозяйства, потребительские расходы, трудовой доход, агрегированные трансфертные счета, Consumption expenditure, экономический жизненный цикл, net saving, aggregate transfer accounts, economic life cycle, labour income, current transfers, disposable income, чистое сбережение, текущие трансферты, располагаемый доход

Publication based on the results of: Региональные трансфертные (межпоколенческие) счета (2026)