The Household Wealth Distribution in Spain: The Role of Housing and Financial Wealth

We analyze the distribution of household wealth in Spain using the first
wave of the Spanish Survey of Household Finances, conducted by the Bank of Spain
in 2002. We study the distribution of the different wealth components and,
using inequality decomposition techniques, we assess the contribution of each
element to overall wealth inequality. We find that wealth is more unequally
distributed than income, while housing wealth is much more evenly distributed than
financial wealth. Moreover, we identify two groups of wealth components: one
disequalizing group, which includes financial wealth, whose value and portfolio share
increase with household wealth; and a second more equalizing one, including housing
wealth, whose value increases with wealth, but their share in the portfolio does
not. Finally we show that differences between age groups do not explain why wealth is
much more unequally distributed than income. Instead, business and home ownership
are factors that clearly contribute to explain this feature.