Rates of adjusted net savings in high-income countries are pushed upward by high investment, lack of dependence on natural resource depletion, and strong exports of high value-added goods and services. Countries with greater intensities of natural resource extraction, such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, had the lowest adjusted net savings rates, while continental Western Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong were the biggest savers, often exceeding 10 to 15 percent. Recent recessions in 1982-83 and 1990 coincided with downward turns in adjusted net savings rates, but the figures consistently exhibit an absence of the volatility and large rates of adjusted net dissaving seen in other regions.
Including human capital investment in adjusted net saving accentuates the differences between countries with strong and those with weak savings efforts. Without the effects of education spending, there is only a modest difference between recent average adjusted net savings rates among low- and middle-income countries, while the high-income countries exceed this level by around 5 percent. Weighing the effects of storing up human capital, however, changes the savings picture. Large investments in education by the most economically successful countries lead them to exceed the adjusted net savings rates of their counterparts in other income groups by around 8 percent in the same period. Investments in young people by middle-income countries were also noticeably larger than in low-income nations.
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