What Explains the Gender Gap in Wealth? Evidence from Administrative Data

Jaanika Meriküll, Merike Kukk and Tairi Room

No 26920, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies the gender gap in net wealth. We use administrative data on wealth that are linked to the Estonian Household Finance and Consumption Survey, which provides individual-level wealth data for all household types. We find that the unconditional gender gap in mean wealth is 45% and that it is caused by large wealth disparities in the upper end of the wealth distribution. The structure of assets owned by men is more diversified than that for women. Men own more business assets and vehicles, while women own more deposits. The gender gaps in these asset components cannot be explained by observable characteristics. For partner-headed households the raw gender gaps across deciles are mostly in favour of men, and more strongly so for married couples, indicating that resources are not entirely pooled within households. For single-member households the raw gaps across quantiles are partially in favour of women. Accounting for observable characteristics renders the unexplained parts of the gaps mostly insignificant for all household types.

JEL-codes: D31 J16 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
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Published as Jaanika Meriküll & Merike Kukk & Tairi Rõõm, 2021. "What explains the gender gap in wealth? Evidence from administrative data," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 501-547, June.

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Journal Article: What explains the gender gap in wealth? Evidence from administrative data (2021)
Working Paper: What explains the gender gap in wealth? Evidence from administrative data (2019)
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