Inflation: GDP deflator
Average annual growth in percentage
During the period 1993-2006, inflation in the OECD area fell to a record low of 1.2% in 1999. It then gradually increased to 2.5% in 2006. The average annual rate of inflation over the last three years was below 5% for all OECD countries, except Norway, Mexico and Turkey. The volatility in the Norwegian GDP deflator is mostly due to variations in the export prices of petroleum, and these grew very strongly over the last few years. The strong growth in the GDP deflator for Mexico and Turkey effectively reflects general domestic inflation occuring in their economies. These latter two countries have, however, drastically reduced their inflation rates over the period 1993-2006. At the other extreme, Finland, Germany, Korea, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland recorded average annual rates of inflation over the last three years of below 1%. Several countries (Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland) recorded deflation over the period 1993-2006 for one or more years, but Japan is the only country where this has been sustained over a number of years.
Household: Net saving rates
As a percentage of household disposable income
Household saving rates are very variable between countries. This is partly due to institutional differences between countries such as the extent to which old-age pensions are funded by government rather than through personal saving and the extent to which governments provide insurance against sickness and unemployment. The age composition of the population is also relevant because the elderly tend to run down financial assets acquired during their working life, so that a country with a high share of retired persons will usually have a low saving rate. Over the period covered in the table, saving rates have been stable or rising in Austria, France, Italy, Norway and Portugal but have been falling in the other countries. Particularly sharp declines occurred in Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Negative saving — which means that consumption expenditures by households exceeded their income — was recorded in some countries, in particular in Australia, Denmark, Greece and New Zealand.
Law, order and defense expenditure
As a percentage of GDP
Within the total, the shares of the two components — law and order and defense — vary considerably between countries with high shares for defense expenditures in the United States, Korea, Norway, Denmark, France and Sweden and high shares for law and order in Iceland, Luxembourg, Ireland, Spain and Belgium. On average, the share of expenditures on law and order has generally been growing faster than defense and now accounts for more than half of the total for the countries shown in the table. In 2005 — the latest year for which most countries can supply data — expenditure was highest in the United States and the United Kingdom, and lowest in Luxembourg, Iceland and Ireland. In the majority of countries the shares of expenditures on defense, law and order in GDP have been falling since 1995 with particularly large falls in Norway, Sweden, Ireland and France.
Prison population
Number per 100,000 inhabitants, 2004
Over the last fifteen years, most OECD countries have experienced a continuous rise in their prison population rates. On average, across the 30 OECD countries, this rate has increased from a level of 100 persons per 100,000 unit of the total population in the early 1990s to around 130 persons in 2004. The prison population rate is highest in the United States, where more than 700 per 100,000 population were in prison in 2004: such level is three to four times higher than the second highest OECD country (Poland), and has increased rapidly. This increase extends to most other OECD countries. Since 1992, the prison population rate has more than doubled in the Netherlands, Mexico, Japan, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Spain and the United Kingdom, while it appears to have declined only in Canada, Iceland and Korea. There are large differences across countries in the make-up of the prison population. On average, one in four prisoners is a pre-trial detainee or a remand prisoner, but these two categories account for a much higher share of the prison population in Turkey, Mexico and Luxembourg. Women and youths (aged below 18) account, on average, for 5% and 2% of the prison population respectively. A much larger share of prisoners is accounted for by foreigners (close to 20% of all prisoners, on average), with this share exceeding 40% of the total in Luxembourg, Switzerland, as well as Australia, Austria, Belgium and Greece. In several countries, the rapid rise in the prison population has stretched beyond the receptive capacity of existing institutions; occupancy levels are above 100% in more than half of OECD countries, and above 125% in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Mexico.
