Geldanlage in turbulenten Zeiten: Wer erzielt die besseren Renditen – „Arm“ oder „Reich“?

The financial and real-economy crises of recent years, along with the resulting monetary policy stabilisation measures, have repeatedly sparked debates about possible impairments to the return potential of household wealth, particularly among lower-wealth groups in Germany. This article therefore calculates the real return on assets and equity of private households in Germany broken down by different wealth groups on the basis of new Eurosystem data set starting in 2011. The results show that ‘richer’ households achieve higher average returns on assets than ‘poorer’ households due to a more favourable portfolio allocation of their assets: ‘poorer’ households, however, generate higher returns on equity than ‘richer’ households due to a more intensive use of financial leverage.