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
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Journal: Journal of European Social Policy ; ISSN: 1461-7269 ; Volume: 31 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 5 ; Pages: 565-579 ; Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
- Subject
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Wealth
Family
Children
Inequality
Separation
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Lersch, Philipp M.
Grabka, Markus M.
Rüß, Kilian
Schröder, Carsten
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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SAGE Publications
- (where)
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Thousand Oaks
- (when)
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2021
- DOI
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doi:10.1177/09589287211040412
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Artikel
Associated
- Lersch, Philipp M.
- Grabka, Markus M.
- Rüß, Kilian
- Schröder, Carsten
- SAGE Publications
Time of origin
- 2021