Patterns of Wealth Inequality with Age in the United States and England: Does Societal Context Matter?

• In Event: 349 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Inequality and Insecurity

Abstract

Wealth reflects an accumulative process of opportunities to acquire, invest, and multiply material and financial assets over time, and these opportunities are socially organized in meaningful ways such as level of educational attainment. To date, much of the empirical work examining patterns of wealth inequality with age has been country-centric, but since opportunity is inherently embedded in social structure, rather than in properties of individuals, it compels us to consider how differing social structures may lead to differential patterning of inequality. In this study, we undertake a cross-national comparison between the United States and England to document how and to what degree socioeconomic inequality increases among adults ages 50 and older and whether those patterns differ by levels of educational attainment. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we calculate intra-cohort differentiation in wealth trajectories. In both nations, wealth inequality increases with age but has a substantially greater rate of growth in the United States, leading to greater overall wealth inequality. When stratified by education level, wealth is lower and less variable in the lowest education classes for both nations. At the highest level of education, there is greater overall wealth in both countries but there is substantially more wealth inequality in the United States than in England. Findings suggest that economic and political policies of each nation have a direct impact patterns of wealth accumulation and degree of wealth inequality with age.

Authors

• Jessica A. Kelley-Moore, Case Western Reserve University

• James Nazroo, University of Manchester

• Jielu Lin, Case Western Reserve University

• Bram Vanhoutte, University of Manchester

• Dale Dannefer, Case Western Reserve University