Gibson-Davis Christina
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.
J Marriage Fam. 2025 Sep 5. doi: 10.1111/jomf.70026.
To examine whether the wealth context of households with children, marked by high rates of inequality and low levels of wealth for those at the bottom, also applies to elderly households and households without children.
Children experience higher income poverty than elderly or working-age adults, but wealth and wealth deprivation comparisons across these groups have not been done. Exploring these differences may reveal another economic dimension on which households with children are uniquely vulnerable and inform policies aimed at financial stability.
Data are drawn from the 1989 to 2022 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances ( = 58,148 households), a nationally representative triannual survey of household wealth. The study tracks trends in wealth inequality, wealth holdings, and net worth poverty across three household types: non-elderly households with children, non-elderly households without children, and elderly households.
Households with children exhibit higher wealth inequality, lower wealth levels, and greater net worth poverty rates than the other two household types. Disparities between elderly and child households are particularly large, with child households having pennies on the dollar for every dollar of elderly wealth. These disparities increased over time, except in the early 2020s, when gaps narrowed.
Like income, wealth is another economic context in which child households compare unfavorably to households without children and elderly households. However, government spending during the pandemic coincided with increases in child household wealth and decreases in net worth poverty, suggesting that child wealth contexts are not fixed.
研究以不平等率高和底层人群财富水平低为特征的有子女家庭的财富状况，是否也适用于老年家庭和无子女家庭。
儿童比老年人或工作年龄成年人经历更高的收入贫困，但尚未对这些群体的财富及财富剥夺情况进行比较。探究这些差异可能会揭示有子女家庭在经济方面的另一个独特脆弱维度，并为旨在实现金融稳定的政策提供参考。
数据取自1989年至2022年的消费者财务状况调查（共58148户家庭），这是一项具有全国代表性的每三年进行一次的家庭财富调查。该研究跟踪了三种家庭类型的财富不平等、财富持有量和净值贫困趋势：有子女的非老年家庭、无子女的非老年家庭和老年家庭。
有子女家庭比其他两种家庭类型表现出更高的财富不平等、更低的财富水平和更高的净值贫困率。老年家庭和有子女家庭之间的差距尤为巨大，有子女家庭每拥有1美元财富，相对于老年家庭的财富只有几美分。除了2020年代初差距缩小外，这些差距随着时间的推移而扩大。
与收入一样，财富也是有子女家庭在经济状况上不如无子女家庭和老年家庭的另一个方面。然而，疫情期间的政府支出与有子女家庭财富的增加和净值贫困的减少同时出现，这表明有子女家庭的财富状况并非一成不变。
