Wealth Inequality and Accumulation

In the paper

“Parental wealth and home value appreciation are positively associated with college enrollment, institutional quality, and bachelor’s degree completion”

• Also stated in: § Consequences of Wealth: Wealth as Predictor · plain

  “Parental wealth and home value appreciation are positively associated with college enrollment, institutional quality, and bachelor’s degree completion (Conley 2001b, Doren & Grodsky 2016, Jez 2014, Lovenheim & Reynolds 2013)”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Conley 2001b
• Partly supported

  The Results sections on baccalaureate college attendance, elite college attendance, and completion report positive associations with family wealth. However, the paper measures total net worth, not home value appreciation, and only the unadjusted wealth estimate for elite college attendance is statistically significant. The indexed passages provide section labels but no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Doren & Grodsky 2016 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Jez 2014 source

In the paper

“whether bequests increase wealth inequality (Boserup et al. 2016, Karagiannaki Forthcoming) and whether whites experience greater wealth benefits of homeownership than African-Americans and Hispanics (Killewald & Bryan 2016) depend on whether comparisons are made in absolute or relative terms.”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The indexed copy’s abstract states that bequests increase absolute wealth inequality but reduce relative inequality. That supports the bequest clause attributed to Boserup et al.; the separate homeownership clause is attributed to Killewald and Bryan, not to this source. (LLM, conf=0.91)

  cites Boserup et al. 2016 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Karagiannaki Forthcoming
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Killewald & Bryan 2016

In the paper

“Recent research has begun to consider the possibility that both the consequences (e.g., Friedline et al. 2015, Killewald 2013) and the determinants of wealth vary across the wealth distribution (e.g. Addo & Lichter 2013, Killewald 2013, Maroto 2016).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friedline et al. 2015 source
• Partly supported

  The Results (page not provided) show that education, income, and parental wealth have different associations with net worth among wealth holders and debtors, supporting variation in the determinants of wealth. The Introduction describes consequences of wealth generally, but the paper does not establish that those consequences vary across the wealth distribution. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Killewald 2013 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Addo & Lichter 2013 source

In the paper

“mean wealth rose from $323,500 to $528,400 during the same time span, reflecting the disproportionate growth of wealth at the top as well as losses at the bottom”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Results section (Repeated cross-sectional analyses; page not available) reports substantially greater pre-recession gains among wealthier households and declines at the bottom, supporting the claim’s description of unequal changes. It does not report mean wealth rising from $323,500 to $528,400 between 1995 and 2013; its mean-wealth trend covers 2003–2011 and includes a decline after 2007. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Pfeffer et al. 2013 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Wolff 2016

In the paper

“young adults’ own wealth supports marriage, while debt encourages cohabitation (Addo 2014, Schneider 2011).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Discussion reports that wealth and marriage are significantly associated among young adults, citing Schneider (2011), and identifies debt as relevant to union formation. The Results say debt increases cohabitation and deters marriage; the paper frames these findings as associations, not proof of causation. No page numbers were available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Addo 2014 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Schneider 2011 source

In the paper

“Among older, previously-married Americans, wealth accelerates both cohabitation and remarriage (Vespa 2012).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Multivariate Analyses section reports that wealthier older adults have a greater risk of both remarriage and cohabitation than of remaining single. The Analytic Strategy section models these as associations in discrete time; it does not establish that wealth causes either transition to happen sooner, as “accelerates” implies. (LLM, conf=0.84)

  cites Vespa 2012 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“For women, student debt is associated with fertility delay, while both mortgages and credit card debt accelerate transitions to parenthood (Nau et al. 2015).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Results section reports that, for women, credit card debt and home mortgages are positively associated with transitioning to motherhood in a given year, while student loans are associated with a lower likelihood. This supports the claimed difference in fertility timing across debt types. (LLM, conf=0.93)

  cites Nau et al. 2015 source

In the paper

“Religious upbringing is also associated with wealth, with Jews accumulating more wealth than otherwise similar mainline Protestants and Catholics, who in turn accumulate more than conservative Protestants (Keister 2003b, 2007, 2008).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Keister 2003b
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Keister 2007 source
• Partly supported

  The Results (page not provided) report that people raised in conservative Protestant families had significantly fewer adult assets than those raised in Catholic and mainline Protestant families after controls. The Conclusion says people born in Jewish families tend to have relatively high net worth, but it does not establish that they have more wealth than otherwise similar Catholics and mainline Protestants. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Keister 2008 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“extended family wealth is associated with education, transition to homeownership, and own wealth (Hall & Crowder 2011, Prix & Pfeffer Forthcoming).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Results (Household Wealth; Transition to Homeownership, pages not provided) associate extended-family wealth with nonowners’ own wealth and with their likelihood of becoming homeowners. Education is included as a control, but the cited paper does not establish an association between extended-family wealth and education. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Hall & Crowder 2011 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Prix & Pfeffer Forthcoming

In the paper

“Compared to whites, Hispanics have lower rates of homeownership, transition to homeownership more slowly, have higher rates of homeownership exit, possess less home equity than whites, and experience smaller wealth benefits from homeownership (Flippen 2001, Killewald & Bryan 2016, Krivo & Kaufman 2004).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Flippen 2001 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Killewald & Bryan 2016
• Partly supported

  The Results report homeownership for 49% of Hispanic households versus over 70% of white households, and lower median home equity among Hispanic homeowners. The Discussion and Conclusions report smaller equity payoffs from housing characteristics for Hispanics. The paper does not establish that Hispanics transition to homeownership more slowly or exit it at higher rates; slower accumulation of equity is a different finding. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Krivo & Kaufman 2004 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“median net worth is higher among Cuban-Americans than among Mexican-Americans, who in turn hold more wealth than Puerto Ricans”

What the sources say

• ?Could not verify

  The Data and Research Design section says the study includes Puerto Rican and Cuban respondents for comparison, but it gives no median net-worth ranking. The Findings section compares Mexican Americans with African Americans and non-Latino whites, not with Cuban Americans or Puerto Ricans. Searches for median net worth and comparisons among the three Latino groups did not locate the claimed ranking in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.72)

  cites Keister et al. 2015 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Scandinavian administrative data sources are particularly powerful because they provide very high-quality wealth measures based on tax registers, often allowing the tracking of individuals across their life-course and across generations for the full population (e.g. Hällsten & Pfeffer Forthcoming for Sweden, and Hansen 2014 for Norway).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Hällsten & Pfeffer Forthcoming
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Hansen 2014 source

In the paper

“Most surveys construct wealth as a household-level measure, although some treat the respondent and partner (if any) as the wealth-holding unit.”

In the paper

“Among U.S. datasets, the SCF collects the most detailed wealth information.”

In the paper

“Over the last several decades, collecting net worth measures has become more common in large-scale surveys fielded in the U.S. and abroad.”

In the paper

“Several surveys, including the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) in the U.S., oversample the wealthy to improve description of the top of the wealth distribution.”

In the paper

“Many of the surveys are longitudinal and several cover multiple decades, allowing observation of wealth over a large portion of the life course and — for genealogical panel studies, such as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its international sister studies — increasingly across generations.”

In the paper

“However, the phase-out of wealth taxation abolishes this data source for some countries, like Sweden since 2007.”

In the paper

“Our analysis (see Figure 1) reveals that correlations based on top-coding both variables at the 99th percentile, taking the natural logarithm, or using percentiles yield similar estimates of about 0.6 — larger than those generated by raw measures or the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation.”

In the paper

“Inequality in net worth increased in the second half of the twentieth century (Keister & Moller 2000), but more rapidly in the new millennium”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Keister & Moller 2000 source

In the paper

“Again, averaging income over multiple years, when possible, can alleviate this concern.”

In the paper

“Using median regression, rather than conditional mean models like ordinary least squares, also reduces the sensitivity of results to extreme observations.”

In the paper

“The log-transform assumes that changes in the independent variables have (roughly) constant proportional effects on net worth, whereas the untransformed specification assumes additive effects.”

In the paper

“So far, there is no consensus on best practices.”

In the paper

“Given that wealth determinants may vary sharply across the wealth distribution, we encourage researchers to use these and other methods, rather than capture only mean differences.”

In the paper

“first-difference models might estimate the short-term wealth consequences of unemployment or health shocks, but they cannot reveal how chronic exposure to unemployment or illness cumulatively affect accumulated wealth in later life: narrowing the time window comes at the expense of fully capturing early life experiences’ downstream wealth effects.”

In the paper

“An alternative is the inverse hyperbolic sine (IHS) transformation, which can incorporate zero and negative values, generating a function that is approximately linear close to zero and approximates the logarithm for large values (Friedline et al. 2015, Pence 2006).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friedline et al. 2015 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Pence 2006

In the paper

“Minimally, top-coding net worth values can help reduce the potential for unduly influential outliers.”

In the paper

“The difficulty of establishing causal relationships has complicated assessments of the processes by which wealth accumulation occurs and between-group disparities in wealth arise.”

In the paper

“Recoding negative values to a small positive value obscures relative net debt values and creates an outlier mass point at the low end of the log net worth distribution (Friedline et al. 2015)”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friedline et al. 2015 source

In the paper

“Given measurement error concerns, wealth measures would ideally be averaged across several years to reduce attenuation bias when used as a predictor variable.”

In the paper

“While income measures the flow of financial resources at a particular time, wealth is a cumulative stock that reflects years of prior circumstances and decisions.”

In the paper

“Another common solution is to log-transform net worth, but this approach requires a decision about how to treat zero and negative values.”

In the paper

“Piketty’s (2014) findings show that developed countries have generally experienced similar trends in wealth inequality through the 20th century, although inequality levels differ considerably.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Piketty 2014 source

In the paper

“Piketty shows that wealth inequality has followed a U-shaped trajectory across most developed countries since 1900, with the upswing occurring in the U.S. since about 1970 and in Europe since about 1980.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Piketty 2014 source

In the paper

“Thus, our results confirm that long-term income better approximates wealth than single-year income, but wealth remains distinct, even from long-term measures of income.”

In the paper

“In old age, wealth may be a critical source of financial resources that replaces employment income.”

In the paper

“Education is associated with greater wealth and more rapid wealth accumulation, net of income (Conley 2001a, Conley & Ryvicker 2004, Keister 2003a,b, 2004; Yamokoski & Keister 2006).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Conley 2001a
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Conley & Ryvicker 2004
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Keister 2003a,b, 2004

In the paper

“Wealth may also provide a cultural signal of status and achievement, potentially conferring political power as well.”

In the paper

“More directly, access to financial resources may ease the transition to adulthood by facilitating higher education, the purchase of a first home, or a wedding.”

In the paper

“Real assets, such as vehicles and homes, have use value.”

In the paper

“Parental wealth may benefit children by shaping the quality of their neighborhood and school contexts, as well as the resources available at home.”

In the paper

“another approach is to consider which component of wealth is likely to have the effect (Spilerman 2000).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Spilerman 2000 source

In the paper

“Financial assets can buffer negative economic shocks.”

In the paper

“their approaches illustrate the importance both of conceptualizing wealth as a cultural marker, not just a stock of financial resources, and of empirically identifying how wealth produces effects by disaggregating net worth into theoretically relevant components.”

In the paper

“Race differences in social origins, including family structure, the economic position of parents and extended family members, and inheritances, also contribute to the black-white wealth gap and to whites’ higher rates of homeownership (Avery & Rendall 2002, Charles & Hurst 2002, Conley 2001a, Gittleman & Wolff 2004, Hall & Crowder 2011, McKernan et al. 2014, Menchik & Jianakoplos 1997).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Avery & Rendall 2002 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Charles & Hurst 2002 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Conley 2001a

In the paper

“Hispanic households had higher risk of exposure to subprime mortgage lending leading up to the Great Recession and higher foreclosure rates in the ensuing crisis (Rugh 2015).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Rugh 2015 source

In the paper

“Compared to whites, African-Americans have substantially lower rates of homeownership, transition to homeownership more slowly, own homes of lower values, have less housing equity, and exit homeownership at higher rates; these differences generally persist even after adjusting for race differences in other characteristics (Charles & Hurst 2002, Flippen 2001, Keister 2000, 2004; Killewald & Bryan 2”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Charles & Hurst 2002 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Flippen 2001 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Keister 2000, 2004

In the paper

“Asians hold, on average, less wealth than whites, but this gap increases after adjusting for other wealth-relevant traits: Asians’ wealth is lower than expected, given their relatively advantaged positions in characteristics such as education, occupation, and income (Campbell & Kaufman 2006).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Campbell & Kaufman 2006 source

In the paper

“However, whether these programs exert effects on net worth — rather than incentivizing the build-up of specific asset components at the expense of others — is less clear and these effects are small relative to the scope of U.S. wealth inequality (Duflo et al. 2006, Grinstein-Weiss et al. 2014, Mills et al. 2008, Schreiner & Sherraden 2007).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Duflo et al. 2006 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Grinstein-Weiss et al. 2014 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Mills et al. 2008 source

In the paper

“Decisions about appropriately operationalizing net worth are not merely a methodological concern; they may significantly shape substantive conclusions.”

In the paper

“Despite the growth of scholarship and data, scholars in this area have not yet reached consensus on fundamental modeling and methodological decisions.”

In the paper

“For example, the extent to which higher tax rates would directly reduce wealth inequality remains unclear (Looney & Moore 2015, Piketty 2014).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Looney & Moore 2015
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Piketty 2014 source

In the paper

“Government transfer programs, including AFDC/TANF and Medicaid, may affect household wealth by reducing saving incentives and encouraging dissaving due to asset tests, or both, but evidence for these effects is mixed (Gruber & Yelowitz 1999, Hurst & Ziliak 2006, Sullivan 2006).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Gruber & Yelowitz 1999 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Hurst & Ziliak 2006 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Sullivan 2006 source

In the paper

“We currently know little about heterogeneity in wealth’s determinants across the wealth distribution and this heterogeneity’s consequences for group-level disparities in wealth.”

In the paper

“Through lending programs administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA), the creation of a secondary mortgage market through Fannie and Freddie Mac, and the mortgage interest deduction, federal policy has expanded the proportion of Americans who could afford homeownership and likely increased the average size and value of homes purchased (for a review”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Shlay 2006 source

In the paper

“While socialist systems limit the accumulation of private wealth and thereby diminish the role of inheritance for asset accumulation (Szydlik 2004)”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Szydlik 2004 source

In the paper

“A core argument advanced in these review pieces — that wealth is an independent and important dimension of social stratification — is now widely accepted.”