The financial accounts of the household sector within the system of national accounts report the aggregate asset holdings and liabilities of all households within a country. In principle, when household wealth surveys are explicitly designed to be representative of all households, aggregating...

The socio-economic mosaic of urban neighbourhoods changes under the influence of three distinctive distributional processes: reordering of the socio-economic position of urban neighbourhoods; changing levels of inequality between neighbourhoods; and an overall growth or decline in income levels...

For many years, the cross-sectional Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has shown relatively weak or inconsistent changes in the shape of the distribution of net worth, despite many shifts in income and other economic factors. In 2009, households that had taken part in the 2007 SCF were...

The EFF collects detailed information on household assets, debts, income, consumption, and demographic variables. One important characteristic of this survey is that it oversamples high-wealth households. Another important characteristic of the EFF is that the second wave has a full panel...

This paper describes how household wealth is distributed in 28 OECD countries, based on evidence from the second wave of the OECD Wealth Distribution Database. A number of general patterns emerge from these data. First, wealth concentration is twice the level of income inequality: across the 28...

We use cross-country microdata to analyse the risk taking of households in Europe and the US. Concerning the extensive as well as the intensive margin of risky assets, European households differ substantially from US households; but also inside Europe we document substantial differences....

Managing personal finances is a valuable skill. Rules of thumb simplify financial management and help families translate theoretical knowledge into practical application. In this study, we focus on the emergency buffer, a crucial component of sound personal finances. Our data confirms that...