Changes in Household Wealth Over the Process of Widowhood Across European Countries - Sciences Po
Journal Articles Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences Year : 2024

Changes in Household Wealth Over the Process of Widowhood Across European Countries

Abstract

Widowhood has been shown to decrease surviving spouses' economic well-being. However, previous research has focused mostly on income-related outcomes, and has been less attentive to the importance of wealth, the processual nature of spousal death, and crossnational variation. In this study, we assessed how total, housing, and nonhousing wealth changes over the process of widowhood across 11 European countries. Individual fixed-effects regressions and longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe were used to estimate how household net total wealth, housing wealth, and nonhousing wealth changed 3 years prior and 6 or more years after spousal death relative to 4 or more years prior to widowhood in 11 European countries. In all countries, household net wealth stayed relatively constant across the widowhood process, except for Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland, where wealth declines were observed especially in the years following death. However, we found declines in housing wealth over the widowhood process, including prior to spousal death, across most countries in our sample, particularly in Austria, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Declines in housing wealth were generally not reflected by changes in nonhousing wealth but coincided with leaving homeownership and downsizing.
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hal-04712778 , version 1 (27-09-2024)

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Nicole Kapelle, Zachary van Winkle. Changes in Household Wealth Over the Process of Widowhood Across European Countries. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2024, 79 (10), pp.gbae116. ⟨10.1093/geronb/gbae116⟩. ⟨hal-04712778⟩
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