There is considerable cross‐country variation in levels of household wealth and in wealth inequality. This paper assesses the extent to which these differences can be accounted for by differences in the distributions of households' demographic and economic characteristics. A counterfactual decomposition analysis of micro data from five countries (Italy, U.K., U.S., Sweden and Finland) is used to identify the effects of characteristics on component wealth holdings, their value and their distribution. The findings of the paper suggest that the biggest share of cross‐country differences is not attributable to the distribution of household demographic and economic characteristics but rather reflect strong unexplained country effects.

Using the British Household Panel Survey, we investigate the role of inheritance in shaping the distribution of household wealth in Great Britain during 1995–2005a period characterized by a substantial increase in wealth and an equally important decrease in wealth inequality. Abstracting from behavioral effects, we find that inheritances received during this period accounted for 30 percent of the increase in wealth of inheritors. Regression estimates of the effect of inheritance on wealth accumulation suggest that households spend 30 percent of their inheritances on average, and that there is substantial heterogeneity in household responses. Households that accumulated more wealth saved a larger share of their inheritances, as did middle aged households and those with lower initial wealth. Although inheritances are highly unequal they had a small impact on overall wealth inequality. This mainly reflected the fact that their size relative to other sources of wealth was very small.

In April 2002 Jobcentre Plus started to operate in the UK, bringing together the service of the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service. Offering a fully integrated benefit-claiming and work placement/job-seeking service for people of working age, this new organisation aims to strengthen the link between welfare and work. Due to the magnitude of the associated organisational change, the national roll out of the new organisation is being implemented gradually over a transitional period ending in 2006. During this transitional period some local offices are fully integrated while others' functions remain split between pre-existing Benefits Agency and Employment Service offices. In this article we examine how changes in the level of integration within districts over time affected performance with respect to job entries, customer service and benefit service delivery. Our analysis suggests that Jobcentre Plus has a clear positive effect on job entry outcomes for all client groups, a negative effect on business delivery, while it has neither a positive nor a negative effect on customer service outcomes.

This paper uses data from the British Household Panel Survey to examine the relationship between parental wealth and three child outcomes in early adulthood. Parental wealth is found to have a very strong positive correlation with children's degree-level qualification attainment at age 25. This correlation is stronger at below-the-median wealth levels and remains strong after controlling for a wide range of confounding family characteristics. There is also evidence of a positive correlation between parental wealth and children's employment probability and earnings. However, for both labour market outcomes the parental wealth gradient is rather weak and for the employment outcome the effect is largely mediated by children's education.

This document is the author's final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Recent trends in the size and the distribution of inherited wealth in the UKDecember 2013 AbstractIn this paper we use HMRC estate statistics and micro-data from four UK household surveys to examine changes in the size, the composition and the distribution of inherited wealth in the UK over the period 1985-2010. Our findings indicate that the period under examination is characterised by a substantial increase in the flow of inheritance. This increase, which was particularly marked in the early 2000s, was mainly driven by the rise in house prices and to a lesser extent by the increase in the proportion of inheritances which included housing assets. The distribution of inheritance amongst recipients became more unequal over this period. However, the inequality-increasing effect from the greater dispersion in the distribution of inheritance was counterbalanced by the increase in the percentage of the population who received an inheritance, resulting in a small decrease in the inequality of inheritance for the population overall. Analysis of the distribution of inheritance by socio-economic status suggests a positive association between inheritance and socio-economic status with some suggestive evidence that this association might have strengthened over time. Overall, however, the value of inheritance for most people is rather small and the differences across groups rather moderate.