High wealth: the Rich have more than you think

The economic distribution research in Germany has always suffered from that, you can evaluate the conditions of poorer and richer people in very different ways. The poorer are often dependent on social transfers, abound in statistics. More on diving, however, rarely used in official statistics and also have the urge for a little of their assets in surveys to disclose. In this vacuum, banks and asset managers with their wealth of encounter reports.

Philipp Krohn

editor in the business, responsible for "people and economy".

In science, the German Institute for economic research has taken an important step. In short, you have to be over-represented by a supplementary sample of people with high assets so that they are under-represented in the regular sample of the German Socio-economic panel (SOEP) to a lesser degree. The regular survey of about 14,000 households will take part.

A 21 times higher net assets than the average

The result is likely to affect the political debate about the distribution of wealth in Germany. According to the conventional sampling richest one percent of Germans, 22 percent of the assets keeps the. According to the new sample and the proportion is even significantly higher. Therefore, the proportion is 35 percent. In this group of millionaires, the proportion of men is above average, they are older, better educated and more satisfied than the population average. The top 10 percent have, according to the new findings, two-thirds of the net assets, previously, it was assumed that due to the high bills, only 59 per cent. Three-quarters of the millionaires are according to the DIW, self-employed or entrepreneurs, 40 percent of their assets are company shares.

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test "thanks to the new data, we can take a millionaire, and millionaires for the first time under the microscope, both their assets as well as characteristics such as age, education and occupation really reliable to describe," said DIW-staff and study co-author Carsten Schröder. The random sample of millionaires is based on a database that includes people with a significant share in the company. The people in this sample had a ums 21 Times more wealth than the German population average. The group of the richest one percent of the wealth distribution starts at a net worth of 1.3 million euros. In the previous analyses of this wealth had been set at one Million euros.

recognition get the DIW researchers of Economists of other Leibniz institutes. "The DIW project is, in principle, very welcome and it's great, what is the SOEP-Team, in order to improve the data situation. The data situation in the area of asset is simply bad, and here (and other data) must do what in Germany,“ said Andreas Peichl from the Munich-based Ifo Institute, the F. A. Z. statistical authorities and ministries should make more.

authors are against a Comeback of the wealth tax

Peichl to bear in mind that the use of rich lists can lead to distortions, because the values are often set very high. Moreover, one should not overstate the results. "The self-employed in Germany, private provision, therefore, their pension will be taken into account as part of their private assets' in the data," said Peichl. In contrast, social security contributions could be Employed to the statutory pension trust, which will not be taken into account in the data. You include you, change the Unequal level of Gini coefficient (where 1 means complete inequality): "When you consider the reduced of the previous Gini of 0.73 to 0.53," he said.