TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Singhal, Karan
AU  - Grabka, Markus
AU  - Sierminska, Eva
        TI  - Dissecting the Gender Gap in Intergenerational Transfers: The Case of Germany
        PY  - 2026/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18706
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18706
        AB  - We study gender disparities in intergenerational wealth transfers in Germany over more than four decades, focusing on inheritances and inter vivos gifts. Using individual-level data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we document persistent gaps: while women are in some cases more likely to report receiving an inheritance, men are more likely to receive gifts and obtain larger overall transfer amounts. These differences are not uniform.
In West Germany, younger women face particularly large disadvantages in gifts, whereas no systematic gaps are observed in East Germany. We also show that transfers, particularly gifts, contribute to the gender wealth gap. Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions indicate that gifts account for a measurable share of the mean gap in 2019, and RIF decompositions re-veal that transfer amounts contribute to both explained and unexplained components across the wealth distribution. Despite gender-neutral inheritance law, our findings suggest that testamentary freedom and persistent social norms continue to generate unequal outcomes.
Addressing these disparities is essential in preventing wealth transfers from reinforcing 
intergenerational and gender-based economic inequality.
        KW  - inheritances
KW  - gift
KW  - gender
KW  - SOEP
KW  - wealth gap
KW  - RIF-regression
        ER  -