Читать книгу Wealth - Yuval Elmelech - Страница 31

Another deviation from the more established research on social mobility, with its focus on labor market attainment, is the multiplicity of domains and markets within which wealth accumulates through the exchange of goods and services. Savings made out of labor income capture only one, albeit important, segment in the chain that constitutes wealth mobility over the life course. In addition to earnings, households’ efforts to secure loans in order to purchase a car or start a business, to gain access to retirement plans and have control over investment decisions, and to find safe and affordable housing are but a few examples of household financial activities and of the numerous market transactions that influence asset ownership, portfolios, and total net worth.

In contrast to transactions among family members, market transactions are based on economic incentives and, as such, involve competition and opposing interests between the two transacting parties: “The exchange of money for a commodity is an economic exchange. When I buy a house, the money paid is a loss, whereas receiving the deed is a gain. For the seller the money is the gain and the house is the loss” (Willer 1999: 28). Because wealth holdings are partly shaped by the exclusionary practices that certain households are likely to encounter in multiple domains (education, welfare, etc.) and in multiple markets (housing, labor, financial, etc.), wealth inequality between the “haves” and “have nots” has the potential to grow over the life cycle. Differential opportunities and constraints that households experience in various markets—such as steering in the housing market, preferential treatment or credit denial from financial institutions, access to or exclusion from employer-sponsored retirement plans, unusually high interest rates on car or mortgage loans—are key determinants of their ability to accumulate, invest, and transfer economic resources.