Diversified Risky Financial Assets in Portfolios of Risk-Averse Households: What Determines Their Occurrence?

Abstract

Selected households declaring unwillingness to take any financial risk hold diversified risky assets, such as publicly-traded shares, other equities, bonds and mutual fund units. Our study aims to identify socio-demographics and socio-economics, which are decisive for this propensity in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, and Spain. It also aims to describe two profiles of risk-averse households—with a tendency to diversify risky assets in portfolios and with a tendency to avoid risky investments. In the study, we apply the Poisson regression model for individual countries as well as for the entire group of countries. We use microdata from the second wave of the Eurosystem’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey. The results obtained allow us to conclude that the propensity to hold diversified types of risky assets mostly refers to these subjectively risk-averse households that receive high incomes and are represented by well-educated persons aged 40+. Opposite to the above, the propensity to behave in a consistent manner on the retail financial market, i.e., to avoid risky assets, is primarily an attribute of low-income households with poorly educated, young, and divorced responding persons. We also identify other characteristics of households in question that complete the above profiles, related to their size, sources of incomes and types of marital status or gender of responding persons. However, their significance can be concluded only at the domestic level.