Agustín Bénétrix

This Policy Brief is based on Arrigoni, Bénétrix, McIndoe-Calder, Romelli (Open Economies Review, 2025). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Banque de France, the European System of Central Banks, or the Economic and Social Research Institute.

This Policy Brief explores the link between household financial holdings and demographic characteristics through the lens of a novel dataset that combines granular asset-level information from the Securities Holdings Statistics (SHS) with household-level characteristics from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). By integrating these two rich yet underutilised datasets, our framework helps overcome the limited availability and accessibility of administrative microdata for cross-country comparisons within the euro area.

As an illustration of its potential, we analyse how portfolio risk and returns vary with education levels. We show that more educated households exhibit higher risk tolerance and achieve higher returns. Understanding household finances is relevant, given its implications for many economic decisions related to consumption, savings and labour supply, that condition macro-financial linkages. Therefore, the insights derived from this augmented dataset can support policymakers seeking to assess the consequences of household decisions and provide researchers with new tools to investigate the drivers of portfolio composition and performance at the household level.

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