Wealth Inequality among Families in a Changing Demographic Landscape: Evidence from Germany, 1988–2017

The role of demographic change for wealth inequality remains underexplored. This study analyzes how shifts in population aging, immigration, partnership status, educational attainment, and female labor force participation influenced wealth inequality in West Germany between 1988 and 2017, focusing on households with children. Our findings reveal that while overall wealth inequality remained stable, this masks diverging trends across household types and conceals how significant demographic shifts within the overall population, and particularly among households with children, contributed to contrasting inequality trends. Increased immigration and changes in partnership status were associated with rising inequality; however, these effects were offset entirely by the inequality-reducing impact of population aging, educational expansion and rising female labor force participation. The study highlights the importance of these demographic changes for understanding trends in wealth inequality and shows that aggregated measures of inequality may mask countervailing effects of demographic shifts among population subgroups. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)