Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom to Top and Young to Old

Charlotte Bartels, Eva Sierminska and Carsten Schröder

No 17324, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique survey data that oversamples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement age. Transfer amounts and their timing are important drivers of these differences: men tend to inherit larger sums than women during their working life. Women often outlive their male partners, thus receiving larger inheritances at older ages.

Keywords: gender economics; inheritances; gender wealth gap; wealth inequality; wealth accumulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-gen and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Economics Letters, 2025, 246, 111997

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17324.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Wealth creators or inheritors? Unpacking the gender wealth gap from bottom to top and young to old (2025)
Working Paper: Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom to Top and Young to Old (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17324

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().