Artikel

Wealth of children from single-parent families: Low levels and high inequality in Germany

Families’ economic wealth is a resource that can provide children with crucial advantages early in their lives. Prior research identified substantial variation of wealth levels between different family types with children from single-parent families being most disadvantaged. The causes of this disadvantage, how much the disadvantage varies between children and how the non-resident parents’ wealth may potentially reduce the disadvantage remain unclear. To address these research gaps, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2002–17) to examine the level of and inequality in wealth for children from single-parent families using recentred influence function regression and decomposition analysis. We replicate earlier findings of a large wealth disadvantage for children in single-parent families. We find that the wealth disadvantage can be mainly explained with compositional differences in household income and employment characteristics. Beyond level differences, inequality between children from single-parent families is higher than for other family types and this inequality can only partly be explained by observed demographic and socio-economic characteristics. When considering the wealth of non-resident parents, the wealth disadvantage of children in single-parent families is reduced but remains substantial.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Journal: Journal of European Social Policy ; ISSN: 1461-7269 ; Volume: 31 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 5 ; Pages: 565-579 ; Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications

Classification
Wirtschaft
Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
Subject
Wealth
Family
Children
Inequality
Separation

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Lersch, Philipp M.
Grabka, Markus M.
Rüß, Kilian
Schröder, Carsten
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
SAGE Publications
(where)
Thousand Oaks
(when)
2021

DOI
doi:10.1177/09589287211040412
Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Artikel

Associated

  • Lersch, Philipp M.
  • Grabka, Markus M.
  • Rüß, Kilian
  • Schröder, Carsten
  • SAGE Publications

Time of origin

  • 2021

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