We have developed and implemented a new sampling strategy to better represent very wealthy individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our strategy is based on the empirical regularity that the very wealthy have at least part of their assets invested in businesses, and that businesses...

We have developed and implemented a new sampling strategy to better represent very wealthy individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our strategy is based on the empirical regularity that the very wealthy have at least part of their assets invested in businesses, and that businesses...

Das Rentenvermögen, also der Gegenwartswert der Ansprüche an die gesetzliche Rentenversicherung, betriebliche Altersvorsorge und Beamt*innenpensionen, wird typischerweise nicht in die Berechnung von Nettovermögen einbezogen. Nach Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) stellt das...

While most studies on wealth inequality focus on the inequality between households, this paper examines the distribution of wealth within couples. For this purpose, we make use of unique individual level micro data from the German socio-economic panel study. In married and cohabiting couples...

Research on wealth inequality usually focuses on real and financial assets, while pension wealth – the present value of future pension entitlements from public and company pension schemes – receives little attention. This is astonishing, given that pension plans play an important role for...

The topic of rising income inequality does not only gain in relevance since the two prominent reports by the OECD (Growing unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries, Paris 2008; Divided we stand-Why inequality keeps rising, Paris 2011) but rather since the financial crisis. So far...

We investigate the explanatory factors that have contributed to changing wealth levels and the gender wealth gap in Germany over the period 2002-2012. In particular, we analyze the role of changes in labor supply, permanent income, portfolio composition, and marital status on wealth...

The objective of the study is to investigate the changing role of explanatory factors of wealth and the gender wealth gap in Germany over the period 2002-2012 using individual level microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The authors apply distributional decomposition methods and focus...

We provide levels of, compositions of, and inequalities in household augmented wealth - defined as the sum of net worth and pension wealth - for two countries: the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth: about 48% in the United States and...

The definition and operationalization of wealth information in population surveys and the corresponding microdata requires a wide range of more or less normative assumptions. However, the decisions made in both the pre- and post-data-collection stage may interfere considerably with the...