Wealth Holdings Research Articles

Wealth creators or inheritors? Unpacking the gender wealth gap from bottom to top and young to old

There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique survey data that oversamples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement age. Transfer amounts and their timing are important drivers of these differences: men tend to inherit larger sums than women during their working life. Women often outlive their male partners, thus receiving larger inheritances at older ages.

Trends in the retirement security of Black and Hispanic households in the US: A setback for Black Americans but continued progress for Hispanics

Retirement income security refers to the ability of households to provide an adequate stream of income during the period of their retirement from the labor force. Expected retirement income is based of four components: (i) standard non-pension wealth holdings, (ii) defined contribution (DC) pension holdings, (iii) actual or expected defined benefit (DB) pension entitlements, and (iv) actual or expected Social Security benefits. The first two components are converted into an annuity. All the data (except rates of return) for these calculations are available from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Results indicate that both Black and Hispanic households made remarkable progress in terms of mean and median retirement income, poverty reduction, and replacement rates from 1989 to 2007 in both absolute terms and relative to whites. However, for Black households, this was followed by a reversal of fortune from 2007 to 2019, with expected median retirement income declining, the projected poverty rate rising, and the projected replacement rate falling, though expected mean retirement income does rise. Hispanics also experienced a setback in mean retirement income but continued progress in replacement rates and reducing poverty from 2007 to 2019.

Marketing Strategies for Financial MCN Institutions in the Era of Integrated Media

The rapid convergence of multiple types of information carriers in the era of integrated media has given rise to the immediate popularity of short-form videos while enhancing the speed and quality of information dissemination, and the Multi-Channel Network (MCN) Institutions behind them have emerged. With the growth of residents' wealth and the increase in demand for investment and financing, MCN institutions focusing on the financial field are attracting more and more attention from the market. Studying the marketing strategies of financial MCN institutions can help improve their business model and is of great significance in promoting the healthy development of investor education. In this paper, we focus on traffic conversion as an essential link in marketing, summarize the common traffic conversion strategies of financial MCN institutions, analyze the case study of JF Wealth Holdings Ltd., and finally provide corresponding strategic suggestions in terms of customer positioning, traffic retention, traffic conversion, and so on.

American Indian Wealth in the Early Twentieth Century

We use data from the Bureau of Indian Affairs annual reports between 1912 and 1927 to examine the wealth of Indigenous nations in the contiguous United States during the early twentieth century. Our estimates reveal considerable heterogeneity in wealth holdings across Indigenous nations. In 1912, the average real per capita wealth of Indigenous nations was high relative to other groups, but it declined systematically throughout the period of our study. Given the available contemporary evidence, our estimates imply a dramatic widening of the wealth gap over the last century.

Inequality and Market Concentration: New Evidence from Australia

Are excessively concentrated markets inequitable as well as inefficient? We explore this issue by analyzing the degree of market concentration in the industries where Australia's wealthiest made their fortunes. Compared with the economy at large, we find that top wealth holders have tended to make their fortunes in industries with a higher‐than‐average degree of market concentration. Top wealth shares have grown substantially, and from 1990 to 2020, there appears to have been an increase in the propensity of top wealth holders to make their fortunes in highly concentrated industries.

Factors associated with child and maternal dietary diversity in the urban areas of Bangladesh.

Dietary diversity is an indicator of nutrition that has been found positively associated with diet quality, micronutrient adequacy, and improved maternal health and child growth. Due to the cultural responsibility of women in providing food at the household level, their status is very important to perform this role. Hence, this study has been conducted on the status of dietary diversity of the mother and child to understand how it relates to various factors of women in urban settings. Data were obtained from 1978 mother-child pairs living in different cities in Bangladesh. The foods taken by the women and children were categorized into 10 and 7 groups to measure women's dietary diversity (WDD) and children's dietary diversity (CDD), respectively. The study found that more than three-fourths of the mothers and half of the children had low dietary diversity. The household wealth holdings and access to resources by the women were found inadequate, while two-thirds of them had the lowest to medium level of nutritional knowledge. The binomial logistic regression model was used to measure the factors influencing WDD and CDD. The findings also indicated that children's dietary diversity was influenced by the mother's age, education, supportive attitude and behavior of husband, and access to and control over resources. While the household wealth index can enhance both child and mother's dietary variety, nutrition knowledge, dietary counseling, and access to and control over resources can improve maternal dietary diversity. This study recommends improving women's socioeconomic status by increasing their wealth and access to resources and enhancing their nutrition knowledge by providing food and nutrition counseling.

Rethinking capital and wealth taxation

Abstract This paper reviews recent developments in the theory and practice of optimal capital taxation. We emphasize three main rationales for capital taxation. First, the frontier between capital and labour income flows is often fuzzy, thereby lending support to a broad-based, comprehensive income tax. Next, the very notions of income and consumption flows are difficult to define and measure for top wealth holders where capital gains due to asset price effects dwarf ordinary income and consumption flows. Therefore the proper way to tax billionaires is a progressive wealth tax. Finally, as individuals cannot choose their parents, there are strong meritocratic reasons why we should tax inherited wealth more than earned income or self-made wealth for which individuals can be held responsible, at least in part. This implies that the ideal fiscal system should also include a progressive inheritance tax, in addition to progressive income and wealth taxes. We then confront our prescriptions with historical experience. Although there are significant differences, we argue that observed fiscal systems in modern democracies bear important similarities with this ideal triptych.

Spending trajectories after age 65 variation by initial wealth

There has been extensive research on the importance of saving for retirement and on tools to support the accumulation of retirement wealth. Much less attention has been paid to the decumulation phase, that is, the spending down of wealth following retirement. Understanding the decumulation phase requires information about the spending patterns of older households and how those patterns evolve with age. This study uses comprehensive longitudinal data on total household spending from a survey that is representative of the older U.S. population to estimate the trajectories of spending after age 65. Based on data spanning the period 2005–2019, real spending declined for both single and coupled households after age 65 at annual rates of about 1.7 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively. Stratification by wealth holdings observed at or closely following age 65 showed sizeable variation in spending levels by wealth quartile, but little variation in rates of change in spending. The fact that spending declines broadly, including among those in the highest wealth quartile, suggests that the decline may not be related to economic position. This view is supported by an analysis of budget shares which show increases with age in the budget share for gifts and donations which suggests that economic position on average does not deteriorate with age, even as spending declines.

Decomposing wealth inequalities in the wake of the Greek debt crisis

While Greece has been the epicentre of economic research on many dimensions after its deep and prolonged crisis, wealth inequalities remain understudied. Our paper explores the levels, distribution, composition, and dynamics of household wealth in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. We find large asymmetries in the allocation of wealth in Greece: the richest 1% of the population holds roughly as much wealth as the poorest 50%, while the richest 10% holds about four times the wealth of the poorest 50%. In addition, wealth inequality in Greece has increased between 2009 and 2017. At the same time, both average and median wealth shrunk by one third, while the share of wealth-poor and hand-to-mouth households increased by about 20%. Our factor inequality decompositions suggest that, despite being relatively evenly distributed, real wealth holdings caused much of the increasing trends in wealth disparities in the country. Conversely, while highly unequally distributed themselves, financial assets played an insignificant role in the wealth dynamics. The findings of the paper carry implications for the design of appropriate policies aiming to increase household resilience and underline the role of asymmetries in real and financial asset holdings for the effectiveness of economic policies.

Stochastic Ordering of Stationary Distributions of Linear Recurrences: Further Results and Economic Applications

We investigate pairwise stochastic comparisons of stationary solutions to the linear recurrence Xt+1=AtXt+Bt, where At and Bt are non-negative random variables. We establish novel order-preserving properties, which enable us to obtain comparison theorems about well-known measures of conditional size, tail variability and skewness across probability distributions. While useful in studies of ergodic wealth accumulation processes and the persistence of inequality, our results can fruitfully be exploited to conduct comparative statics exercises in structural models entailing Kesten-type reduced-form representations. An application of our analysis to a dynamic asset accumulation model uncovers the qualitatively similar effects of capital income and earnings taxation on expected wealth concentration over higher quantiles as well as on conditional upper tail dispersion of wealth holdings, qualifying previous results that solely rely on the determination of Pareto exponents.

Financial Market Participation and Retirement Age of the UK Population

Recently, many papers have shown evidence of a positive association between financial market participation and wealth holdings. It is often claimed that individuals with a higher level of financial market participation exhibit a higher propensity for planning retirement. In their planning process, individuals seek to achieve an optimal wealth level before their retirement by considering both their average saving rate and their retirement age. In this paper, we tested whether UK individuals with a higher level of financial market participation and, therefore, with a higher propensity for planning retirement were more likely to delay their retirement age than individuals with lower financial participation. On the basis of regression analyses using the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA) database for waves 1–6, our results support the hypothesis of a positive relationship between financial market participation and retirement age, reinforcing previous results.

Freedom: The Function of Criticism at All Times

AbstractLiterary disciplines’ loss of integrity began at the end of the Cold War and accelerated after the financial crisis of 2008–09 because of internal changes responding to external desires along with direct pressures from money and power. Academics follow the desires of moneyed and state interests away from the formation of critical humanists, removing key social values of judgment and self-formation from the ideals of humanistic education. Following the nudges of neoliberal administrations and inventing their own methods and positions congenial to the holders of power and wealth, literary academics in the United States especially have facilitated their own weakness as disciplines with dire political consequences in an era of neo-authoritarianism.

Wealth Accumulation and De‐Risking Strategies Among High‐Wealth Individuals

The emergence of the asset economy in advanced capitalist countries has enabled significant asset accumulation by high‐wealth individuals, and the rise of finance has provided new, profitable investment vehicles for those with investable capital. This accumulation process has been described as a form of compensatory logic to achieve protection from future risks, especially in the current neoliberal environment with governments reducing state pensions while promoting tax‐deductible private investments as a substitute for state provision. This article reports the results of qualitative research into the private wealth accumulation attitudes and behaviours of high‐wealth individuals and their worries about achieving a comfortable retirement despite their substantial wealth holdings. Although the interviewees reside within the top 5% of the wealth distribution in the UK and would be expected to feel confident that their wealth will be sufficient to support their retirement needs, they convey a sense of uneasiness and concern that they will still not have enough to support their expected retirement lifestyles. In response to this perceived risk, these high‐wealth individuals engage in a variety of what I call “de‐risking” behaviours with the goal of mitigating the risk of insufficient wealth to support retirement. The article contributes to our understanding of the processes utilised by high‐wealth individuals to help ensure they have sufficient wealth to support their desired comfortable retirement by engaging in strategies intended to de‐risk their financial lives.

Does financial efficiency contribute to improvement in energy efficiency? Evidence from BRICS and next 11 countries

PurposeThis study is aimed to measure the intertemporal financial efficiency of 16 emerging economy countries (BRICS and N-11) and further to investigate the mechanisms of financial development on energy efficiency covering the period 2008–2020.Design/methodology/approachThe dynamic data envelopment analysis model is used to measure financial efficiency dynamically. The generalized method of moments is used to investigate the effects of financial efficiency on energy efficiency. In the proposed approach, energy efficiency is the dependent variable, whereas financial efficiency, GDP per capita, industrial structure upgrade index, urbanization level and export trade structure are the regressors. Generalized moment estimation is performed.FindingsThere is heterogeneity in the level of financial development at different stages of economic development. The impact of financial efficiency on energy efficiency is related to the type of industries to which financial institutions are allocated. With the financial development of emerging economies, enterprises in technology-intensive industries are becoming the main contributors to higher profits for financial institutions, the products and results of these enterprises reduce energy consumption and increase energy efficiency. In addition, residents with rising levels of wealth holdings prefer low-carbon and environmentally friendly products, which indirectly improves energy efficiency. Per capita GDP and urbanization have no significant impact on the energy efficiency of emerging economies. The optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure of emerging economies has played a role in promoting energy efficiency. The export trade structure has a restraining effect on energy efficiency.Originality/valueThe findings contribute value by supporting a positive link between Financial Development and Energy Efficiency in the emerging economies. Enterprises in technology-intensive industries have gradually become the main force that brings higher profits to financial institutions. The products and achievements of these enterprises will reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency. The findings of this study provide emerging economies with an objective view of their financial development and energy efficiency, while also providing governments and policymakers with ways to improve energy efficiency and achieve sustainable development.

Wealth, Money, Power, and Class in Aotearoa New Zealand

Review of Max Rashbrooke, Too Much Money: How Wealth Disparities Are Unbalancing Aotearoa New Zealand. A masterful overview of the available statistical information on the size of wealth holdings and their degree of concentration in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Is there wealth stability across generations in the U.S.? Evidence from panel study, 1984–2017

AbstractThe net wealth accumulation of grandparents appears to be strongly determinative of the net wealth holdings of their adult grandchildren. While these general features are understood, few details are known about the persistence of wealth components that determine overall portfolio outcomes and their variance. I find that grandparental linkages in household portfolio components (risky assets, safe assets, non‐financial assets) are strongly positively correlated with the asset components of the current generation. Meanwhile, I find that there is persistence in intergroup disparities in wealth components, accounting for the intergenerational transfers of wealth from grandparents and parents. My decompositions of net wealth into risky, safe, and non‐financial assets illuminate different policy implications connected to total wealth accumulation and wealth inequality across younger households.

The Wealth (Disadvantage) of Single-Parent Households

Wealth is a buffer against economic shocks and the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. We investigate the wealth of single-parent households in six high-income countries that span a variety of institutional contexts and welfare regimes. Using household survey data, we show that single-parent households in all these countries are disadvantaged in the wealth they hold, compared to dual-parent households—more so in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States; and less so in Italy and, especially, Spain. We tease out major differences in types of wealth holdings in single- and dual-parent households. We find that the single-parent wealth deficit is not explained by differences in age or number of children but that it is influenced by education, income, homeownership, and receipt of intergenerational transfers. We discuss the policy implications of our findings, both in terms of how single parents are treated in social protection and taxation systems and, more broadly, in the supports they require if they are to overcome barriers to accumulating wealth.

In sole or joint names? The role of employment and marriage biographies for married women’s asset ownership in later life

The way women hold assets within couples (solely or jointly) is a crucial dimension of their economic situation. This study examines the distribution of women’s assets within married couples and how the interplay of their employment and marriage biographies is related to their asset holdings in later life. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017), the author applies multichannel sequence and cluster analyses to examine patterns of female employment-marriage biographies in Western Germany. Fractional logit and ordinary least square regression models are utilised to predict the share and the level of women’s solely and jointly held assets within couples. The findings show that the majority of married couples build strong economic units, holding most of their assets jointly. The share of solely and jointly held assets however varies considerably across couples, being lowest in couples with long-term female homemakers. Women’s accumulation of solely held wealth is found to require stable full-time employment, whereas the access to joint investments is defined by long-time employment arrangements of any type embedded in stable marriages from early in life on. In remarriages or late marriages, in contrast, women’s joint wealth holdings are reduced. However, this lack cannot be compensated by increased investments in solely held wealth, leaving remarried and late married women with overall lower levels of wealth than stable or early married women. This study indicates that women’s financial independence provided by their high labour market participation does not reduce the degree of financial jointness within marriage.

Are Married Women Really Wealthier Than Unmarried Women? Evidence From Japan.

Using microdata from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, this article examines the relationship between marriage and wealth among women. By exploiting unique data on personal wealth, it also assesses whether the wealth effect of marriage differs depending on whether wealth is measured as household or personal wealth, an issue that very few studies have examined. When wealth is measured as equivalized household net worth, on the assumption that married couples share household resources equally, marriage is found to contribute to women's wealth holdings but only to their nonfinancial net worth; however, the results show signs that marriage also contributes to women's total net worth as marriage durations increase. By contrast, when wealth is measured as personal net worth based on the actual ownership of assets, marriage is found to be negatively and significantly associated with women's wealth holdings. These findings underscore the fact that Japanese women are potentially in a financially vulnerable position even after marriage, which is at least partly driven by married women's career disruptions arising from their family responsibilities.

A Longevity Mechanism of Chinese Absolutism

A counterpart of what is known as “European exceptionalism”—political stability and institutional arrangement that enabled modern economic growth and political development—is a “Chinese anomaly.” This anomaly takes the form of a sharp contrast with premodern Europe: Chinese imperial rulers stayed in power longer than their European counterparts, but this political stability was accompanied by a high level of institutional stasis. In this article, we argue that a well-known Chinese institution, the civil service examination (CSE) system, contributed to China’s imperial longevity. We use detailed historical data on individual CSE performance to demonstrate the longevity-contributory mechanisms of CSE—constraining access to power by aristocrats and other wealth holders. We argue that a key to unpacking the so-called Chinese anomaly is to understand the role of bureaucracy in political development in China and potentially in other regions.