IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp19035.html

Wealth among Siblings in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Lersch, Philipp

    (DIW Berlin, HU Berlin)

  • Schnitzlein, Daniel D.

    (Hochschule der Bundesagentur für Arbeit (HdBA))

  • Pfeffer, Fabian

    (LMU Munich)

  • Grabka, Markus

    (DIW Berlin)

Abstract

This study examines sibling similarity in wealth in Germany and how it is shaped by family socioeconomic status, partnering, and partner wealth homogamy. We use multilevel models, variance decomposition, and a novel decomposition for partnered individuals drawing on high-quality, nationally representative survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study to estimate overall and gender-specific sibling correlations in wealth for all of Germany and for East and West Germany separately. Overall, sibling similarity in wealth is relatively high in Germany with an overall value of 0.33, though similarity in wealth is substantially higher in West Germany than in East Germany. Sister correlations in individual wealth are higher than brother correlations, although this gender difference shrinks once we consider household wealth. An important channel creating sibling similarity in household wealth runs through partners’ wealth. Socioeconomic status of the origin family accounts for a substantial portion of sibling similarity among women but less so among men.

Suggested Citation

  • Lersch, Philipp & Schnitzlein, Daniel D. & Pfeffer, Fabian & Grabka, Markus, 2026. "Wealth among Siblings in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 19035, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp19035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp19035.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • C30 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp19035. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.