Examining the gender wealth gap

Eva Sierminska, Joachim Frick and Markus Grabka

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 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.

Keywords: Wealth gap; Wealth inequality; Gender; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D31 D69 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (87)

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Journal Article: Examining the gender wealth gap (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:66144

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