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The 10 Countries Where Households Owe the Most |
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Household debt is what families owe — mortgages, car loans, credit cards — measured against the size of the economy. The Bank for International Settlements tracks it across the rich and middle-income world. The most indebted households sit not in the poorest countries but in Switzerland, where families owe more than the whole economy makes in a year. |
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Source: Bank for International Settlements, household debt as % of GDP, Q4 2025. World figure: IIF Global Debt Monitor, Q4 2024. |
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| What's Surprising |
Switzerland tops the world at 123% of GDP. Households there owe more than the whole country produces in a year. Yet barely a third of Swiss families own their home, one of the lowest rates in the rich world. The debt is a tax quirk.
Swiss owners are taxed on the rent they don't pay on their own homes, and can deduct their mortgage interest. So it pays to hold a big mortgage and never pay it down. In September 2025, voters finally scrapped that tax — and the deduction goes with it.
The rest of the top is a housing story: Australia 114%, Canada 101%, New Zealand 91%, decades of rising prices funded by mortgages. The one outsider is Thailand at 88%, the only emerging economy near the top, and its central bank's biggest worry.
| What's Not Surprising |
This is a rich-country list. Deep mortgage markets, dear housing and cheap credit build big household balance sheets. Nine of the top ten are high-income economies. Poor countries barely lend to households at all.
The giants sit low. Germany, Europe's largest economy, is at 49% — a nation of renters and savers. Japan 61%. China 58%, though that has more than tripled since 2008 as families bought apartments. None of the five biggest economies makes the top ten.
High debt isn't the same as crisis. Switzerland, Australia and Canada are among the richest, most stable countries on Earth. The debt is backed by property and, mostly, by people who can pay it. It's a housing story, not a default story — until rates rise.
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123% Switzerland's household debt, the most on Earth. Swiss families owe more than the whole economy earns in a year — and the tax system long rewarded keeping the mortgage. |
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3 Countries where households owe more than the entire economy produces: Switzerland, Australia and Canada, all above 100% of GDP. |
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68% US household debt today, down from nearly 100% in 2007. The country that set off the last mortgage crisis has spent 18 years paying it down. |
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88% Thailand's household debt, the only emerging economy in the top ten. Built on car and consumer loans, it's now a major drag on the country's growth. |
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$60T What the world's households owe together, about 60% of global GDP. Most of it is mortgages, and most of that sits in a handful of rich countries. |
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Switzerland is unwinding the tax break behind its number-one spot. Voters scrapped the imputed-rent tax in September 2025, and the mortgage-interest deduction goes with it, phased in around 2028 — a reason, at last, for Swiss owners to pay down. Watch Canada and Australia too, where high rates are squeezing mortgage holders, and Thailand, where the government is pushing debt relief. The next BIS figures land next quarter. We'll be watching. |
