Differences in the level and structure of household indebtedness in the EU countries

The article presents the outcomes of dynamic, cross-section analysis of the differences in the level and structure of household indebtedness in EU countries and the range of problems with debt service between 2005 and 2009. Statistical data from of the EU Commission, obtained in the periodic research of people’s incomes and living conditions (EU-SILC) and the ECRI - European Credit Research Institute, was used in the research, as well as the method of multi-dimensional analysis (cluster analysis and k-means method), enabling to classify EU households according to the features of their indebtedness. Moreover, in order to define the quantitative relationships between the level and structure of households’ indebtedness and the frequency of repayment problems, tools such as correlation analysis and stepwise regression, enabling the description of its strength and direction of influence of selected variables on repayment problems.