Examining the gender wealth gap

Eva Sierminska, Joachim Frick and Markus Grabka

Oxford Economic Papers, 2010, vol. 62, issue 4, 669-690

Abstract: Economic research on the determinants of gender differences in economic outcomes particularly in income and consumption is well established. Extending these investigations to other outcomes such as wealth up till now has been limited due to lack of individual-level data. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) we find a significant 'raw' gender wealth gap of 50,000€ for married partners. Decomposition analyses reveal that the gap is largely driven by differences in characteristics between men and women (observables), particularly by individual's own income and labour market experience. This is especially true at the bottom and at the top of the wealth distribution, which we show using semi-parametric decomposition techniques. Differences in the lower half of the distribution are mostly driven by the wealth function, i.e., the way in which women transform their characteristics into wealth. Copyright 2010 Oxford University Press 2010 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (89)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpq007 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Examining the gender wealth gap (2010)
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:oup:oxecpp:v:62:y:2010:i:4:p:669-690

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().