Anhaltend hohe Vermögensungleichheit in Deutschland
DIW-Wochenbericht, (February 2014)Abstract
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 worth. On average, individual net worth in 2012 totaled more than 83,000 euros; that is slightly more than ten years previously. The degree of wealth inequality remained virtually unchanged. With a Gini coefficient of 0.78, Germany has a high degree of wealth inequality compared to other countries and there is still a wide gap between western and eastern Germany, almost 25 years after unification. In 2012, the average net worth of eastern Germans was less than half that of western Germans.