Wealth and Portfolio Composition

This paper provides basic statistics on household total wealth, financial assets, and financial assets composition of the elderly as key indicators of the well-being and quality of life of the elderly. Median total wealth varies much less than median financial wealth across countries. As for financial asset ownership, the chapter focuses on bonds, stocks, mutual funds and life-insurance policies and documents the polarization between Nordic and Mediterranean countries. The elderly tend to invest more in stocks and to have a more diversified portfolio in Northern and Central Europe than in the South. The chapter also offers insights about the relation between financial risk exposure and age and the time that the elderly spend managing their financial assets.