Family Complexity and Later-Life Wealth: A Comparative Perspective Across European Countries

Abstract This paper investigates how the complexity of individual family trajectories relates to personal net wealth in later life, in comparative perspective. Using retrospective and prospective SHARE data (waves 1–7, 2004–2017), we analyse cohorts born between the 1930s and 1960s across ten European countries, grouped into Scandinavian, Continental, and Southern clusters. We derive a measure of family complexity from sequence analysis and estimate generalised additive models to assess its non-linear association with personal net wealth at age 50 and beyond, separately for women and men, and examine whether this association persists once qualitative trajectory patterns (traditional, modern, postponed, dissolution) are accounted for. Results show that the complexity–wealth association is neither linear nor universal. In Scandinavian and Continental countries, predicted wealth peaks at moderate complexity and is lower at both extremes: in Scandinavia, the high-complexity penalty is concentrated among men, while women face sharper disadvantage at low complexity; in Continental countries, women are penalised at both ends, whereas men face a significant penalty only at low complexity, with no significant association at the upper end once education is controlled. In Southern countries, complexity is monotonically and positively associated with wealth for both sexes, with the steepest gradient among women. The complexity–wealth gradient is largely unaffected by conditioning on qualitative trajectory patterns, indicating that its consequences are not reducible to specific biographical configurations. Educational sorting attenuates but does not eliminate these associations. Our findings underscore the importance of institutional context and social stratification in shaping the long-term economic consequences of family diversification.