Intragenerational Mobility in Wealth in Germany, Norway, and Britain: Descriptive Evidence

We study intragenerational wealth rank mobility, investigating three dimensions: (i) wealth mobility over the life cycle, (ii) heterogeneity in mobility among subgroups and wealth components, and (iii) commonalities and differences across divergent country contexts. We use data from Germany (SOEP, N= 12,380 individuals), Norway (administrative register data, N=3,460,602), and Britain (BHPS, N=7,910; UKHLS, N=18,428), examining intraindividual rank-rank correlations, the distribution of rank changes, and rank mobility curves. We find substantial mobility in wealth, which is often of short range. Mobility increases with the observation window (5, 10, 15 years). Wealth mobility is highest in Norway, followed by similar mobilitiy in Britain and Germany. Furthermore, early life cycle stages and parental tertiary education are associated with greater mobility, whereas gender differences are small. Mobility is higher in financial than in housing wealth, but remains substantial in the latter. Our findings reveal substantial but predominantly short-range wealth mobility, indicating that individual wealth positions are less static than cross-sectional distributions suggest, even as the overall structure of inequality persists.