Changes in wealth distribution in Italy (2002-2012) and who gained from the Great Recession

The aim of the paper is to analyze changes in families’ assets between 2002 and 2012; to measure changes in the degree of inequality; and to identify which social groups (or classes) have gained from these changes, using the decomposition procedure of the Gini concentration ratio proposed by Dagum (1997). Our paper introduces also two important methodological innovations. First the definition of household wealth that we use is net wealth minus the value of the household’s home, if owned. Moreover, we developed a new method for computing the Gini coefficient with negative values and for decomposing it.