By 2010, 27 to 40 percent of all households in euro countries had inherited or received gifts. This only includes transfers from outside their own household. The present value of these transfers averaged between 85,000 and 274,000 euros, depending on the relevant country. The sum of all...

Overall monetary redistribution via the tax and transfer system leads to net incomes being much more evenly distributed in Germany than market income. As a result, in 2011, the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.5 for market income to 0.29 for household disposable income. The social security...

Overall monetary redistribution via the tax and transfer system leads to net incomes being much more evenly distributed in Germany than market income. As a result, in 2011, the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.5 for market income to 0.29 for household disposable income. The social security...

Inequality of disposable incomes in Germany has decreased slightly since its peak in 2005. However, this trend did not continue in 2011. The most important reasons for this were the inequality in market incomes, including capital incomes, which had increased again. Besides this finding, the...

According to current analyses based on the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), the total net assets of German households in 2012 amounted to 6.3 trillion euros. Almost 28 percent of the adult population had no or even negative net wealth. On average, individual net assets in 2012 totaled over...

People's expectations after the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago and of reunification in 1990 were huge. The government promised to create "flourishing landscapes" within a few years. The euphoria of reunification came not only through the desire to finally become one country and one nation...

Very nearly 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, households in eastern Germany have an average net worth of 67,400 euros which is less than half that of their counterparts in western Germany with an average net worth of 153,200 euros. In both parts of the country, real estate ownership is...

The analyses of wealth inequality based on survey data usually suffer from undercoverage of the upper percentiles of the very wealthy. Yet given this group's substantial share of total net worth, it is of particular relevance. As no tax data are available in Germany, the largest fortunes can...