Will households spend what they have saved?

If euro-zone households spent all of their forced savings from last year, it could provide a boost to GDP growth in 2021 of as much as 3%. In practice, we doubt that it will be anything like that large. Instead, we think that only some of these savings will be spent, and that additional expenditure will be spread over a few years. We forecast the saving rate to fall back to its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2022.