This paper analyses aggregate household wealth in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US. Building on a new data set for the time span 1980-2011, we discuss the trends in household financial assets in the last thirty years, the reasons for differences across countries,...

The paper offers a comparative analysis of household wealth in the main industrial countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. Particular attention is devoted to Italy. We distinguish between financial wealth, real assets, indebtedness, and net...