Mind the Gap! Decomposing Gender Differences in Subcomponents of Financial Wealth

This paper explores the gender gap in sub-components of financial wealth using data from the Wealth and Assets Survey for Great Britain (GB). Detailed sub-categories of financial wealth are investigated with the existing literature typically only exploring total overall financial wealth or specific types of assets – predominantly stocks. The analysis considers the gap in different types of financial assets at both the extensive margin (i.e., the probability of holding a given component of financial wealth, e.g. stocks and shares ISAs) and the intensive margin (the proportion of financial wealth held in each asset, conditional on ownership), using decomposition techniques. The results reveal that females hold a higher (lower) proportion of their financial wealth in liquid (illiquid) assets such as savings accounts (stocks and bonds). A range of covariates influence the explained gap at the extensive margin, such as time preference and financial literacy for the likelihood of owning stocks and/or bonds; whilst total annual income and home ownership reduces the gender gap for each type of asset. However, in common with the existing literature the majority of the gender gap for each component of financial wealth remains unexplained.