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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Mapping and measuring the distribution of household wealth
— a cross-country analysis | | Author(s) | Frank A Cowell, Eleni Karagiannaki, Abigail McKnight |
| Corporate Author | ESRC Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion - CASE, Suntory-Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines - STICERD, London School of Economics and Political Science |
| Publisher | STICERD, London, 2012 |
| Pages | 69 pp (CASEpaper 165) |
| Source | Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case |
| Keywords | Wealth ; Measurement ; Cross national surveys. |
| Annotation | The authors compare the level, composition and distribution of household wealth in five industrial countries - the UK, US, Italy, Finland and Sweden - by exploiting the harmonized data within the Luxembourg Wealth Study. They examine trends in the UK and the US between the mid 1990s and the mid 2000s. Remaining differences between surveys, variable definitions and coverage are highlighted to the extent that they impact on cross-country comparisons. The Nordic countries have lower average wealth holdings, smaller absolute gaps between low wealth and high wealth households, but high relative measures of wealth inequality. Italian households hold very little debt and are much more likely to own their homes outright, leading to relatively high median levels of wealth. In contrast, American households tend to hold much more housing debt well into retirement. Increases in owner occupation and house prices from 2000 to 2005 in the UK has led to substantial increases in wealth, particularly median wealth holdings; this had led to falls in relative measures of wealth inequality such as the Gini coefficient, even though absolute gaps between high and low wealth households have grown substantially. There are underlying country differences in terms of distributions of age, household composition, educational attainment and income, as well as wealth and debt portfolios. Educational loans are increasing in their size and prevalence in some countries. these look set to create some marked differences in the distribution of wealth for different age cohorts. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-130625001 B |
| Classmark | W7: 3R: 3K |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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