Accounting for cross-country differences in wealth inequality

Frank Cowell (), Eleni Karagiannaki and Abigail McKnight

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: There is considerable cross-country variation in levels of household wealth and in wealth inequality. This paper assesses the extent to which these differences can be accounted for by differences in the distributions of households’ demographic and economic characteristics. A counterfactual decomposition analysis of micro data from five countries (Italy, UK, US, Sweden and Finland) is used to identify the effects of characteristics on component wealth holdings, their value and their distribution. The findings of the paper suggest that the biggest share of cross-country differences is not attributable to the distribution of household demographic and economic characteristics but rather reflect strong unexplained country effects.

Keywords: household wealth; wealth inequality; debt; housing assets; educational loans; age-wealth profiles; decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D31 D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2018-06-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published in Review of Income and Wealth, 1, June, 2018, 64(2), pp. 332 - 356. ISSN: 0034-6586

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68101/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Accounting for cross-country differences in wealth inequality (2013)
Working Paper: Accounting for cross-country differences in wealth inequality (2013)
Working Paper: Accounting for Cross-Country Differences in Wealth Inequality (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:68101

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