What drives household consumption in the EU-28?

Given that final consumption of households has contributed on average to broadly 60% of EU-28 GDP since 2001, an assessment of the drivers behind its dynamics is quite timely in a context of gradual economic recovery. Empirical analyses including 19 EU-28 economies suggest that disposable income of households, consumer credit markets and the developments in housing markets have had a significantly positive impact on the growth of household final consumption since 2001. On the other hand, demographic trends do not seem to have played any significant role.