What Explains the Gender Gap in Wealth? Evidence from Administrative Data / Jaanika Meriküll, Merike Kukk, Tairi Rõõm.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meriküll, Jaanika.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Kukk, Merike.

Rõõm, Tairi.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26920.

NBER working paper series no. w26920

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2020.