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.

Sprache
Englisch

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

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
Thema
Wealth
Family
Children
Inequality
Separation

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Lersch, Philipp M.
Grabka, Markus M.
Rüß, Kilian
Schröder, Carsten
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
SAGE Publications
(wo)
Thousand Oaks
(wann)
2021

DOI
doi:10.1177/09589287211040412
Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Artikel

Beteiligte

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

Entstanden

  • 2021

Ähnliche Objekte (12)