Advanced Search

Cross-National Comparison of Income and Wealth Status in Retirement: First Results From the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS)

Contents:

Author Info

  • Eva Sierminska
  • Andrea Brandolini

    () (Bank of Italy)

  • Timothy M. Smeeding

    (Center for Policy Research, Syracuse University)

Abstract

This paper provides a first glance at the role of income and wealth in comparing economic security of older persons in the United States in cross-national perspective. We compare our elders to those in six other rich OECD countries (Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). These countries have diverse social policy systems, with respect to both social insurance and public assistance; and they have very different patterns of private wealth holding. The paper is based on a new source of wealth micro data, known as the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS). In this paper, we first develop a comparable definition of wealth and net worth across nations and then focus our efforts on the inter-country variation in the composition of income and asset packages for those 65 and over, with respect to the main sources in each package. We examine the structure of income and wealth holdings and their joint distribution; income and asset poverty of the elderly; the importance of home ownership in providing security for the elderly; differences in wealth by education; and we provide an initial glimpse at wealth and income inequality in a comparative perspective. We conclude by comparing the risks associated with private assets to those associated with under-funded public pension systems.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://crr.bc.edu/images/stories/Working_Papers/wp_2007-3.pdf
Our checks indicate that this address may not be valid because: 404 Not Found. If this is indeed the case, please notify (Amy Grzybowski) or (Christopher F Baum)
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Center for Retirement Research in its series Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College with number wp2007-03.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length: 42 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2007
Date of revision: Feb 2007
Handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2007-03

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Hovey House, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Phone: (617) 552-1762
Fax: (617) 552-0191
Email:
Web page: http://crr.bc.edu/
More information through EDIRC

For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Amy Grzybowski) or (Christopher F Baum).

Related research

Keywords: wealth; cross-national; private holdings; Luxembourg Wealth Study; home ownership; asset poverty; elderly; education; differences in wealth; public pension systems;

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. FRANÇOIS ORTALO-MAGNÉ & SVEN RADY, 2006. "Housing Market Dynamics: On the Contribution of Income Shocks and Credit Constraints," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(2), pages 459-485, 04.
  2. Pietro Catte & Nathalie Girouard & Robert Price & Christophe André, 2004. "Housing Markets, Wealth and the Business Cycle," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 394, OECD Publishing.
  3. Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2004. "Aging and Housing Equity: Another Look," NBER Chapters, in: Perspectives on the Economics of Aging, pages 127-180 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Timothy Smeeding, 2006. "Poor People in Rich Nations: The United States in Comparative Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 69-90, Winter.
  5. Eva Sierminska & Andrea Brandolini & Timothy Smeeding, 2006. "The Luxembourg Wealth Study – A cross-country comparable database for household wealth research," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 375-383, December.
  6. F. Thomas Juster & James P. Smith & Frank Stafford, 2004. "The Measurement and Structure of Household Wealth," Labor and Demography 0402009, EconWPA.
  7. Maria Concetta Chiuri & Tullio Jappelli, 2006. "Do the elderly reduce housing equity? An international comparison," CSEF Working Papers 158, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
  8. John B. Shoven & Sita N. Slavov, 2006. "Political Risk Versus Market Risk in Social Security," NBER Working Papers 12135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2000. "Choice, Chance, and Wealth Dispersion at Retirement," NBER Working Papers 7521, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Annika Sunde´n, 2006. "The Swedish Experience with Pension Reform," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 133-148, Spring.
  11. Timothy M. Smeeding, 1999. "Social Security Reform: Improving Benefit Adequacy and Economic Security for Women," Center for Policy Research Policy Briefs 16, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
  1. Oleg Badunenko & Nataliya Barasinska & Dorothea Schäfer, 2009. "Risk Attitudes and Investment Decisions across European Countries: Are Women More Conservative Investors than Men?," SOEPpapers 224, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
  2. Greet De Vil & Gijs Dekkers & Raphael Desmet, 2010. "Working Paper 10-10 - The long-term adequacy of the Belgian public pension system: An analysis based on the MIDAS model," Working Papers 1010, Federal Planning Bureau, Belgium.
  3. Dekkers, Gijs, 2008. "Are the old poor? A discussion and some cursory evidence," MPRA Paper 29436, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  4. Figari, Francesco & Matsaganis, Manos & Sutherland, Holly, 2011. "The financial well-being of older people in Europe and the redistributive effects of minimum pension schemes," EUROMOD Working Papers EM7/11, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2007-03

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Amy Grzybowski) or (Christopher F Baum).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.