(October 2026)  Life events like marriage and divorce have obvious consequences for personal wealth. But those consequences will be different based on how much a person cycles through major life events and changes in their family and living arrangements – factors that are far less frequently captured in today’s research. 

This matters because while long ago, most people’s lives followed relatively similar paths, divergent and turbulent family trajectories that go against the norm have become more common than ever.  

Let’s say Lucia lives with her parents until she marries at 23. She has two children and is still married at 50. Her family life has passed through only three situations, with two changes.  

Meanwhile, her friend Elena moves out at 20 and lives alone, then moves in with a partner. They separate, she later marries and has a child, then divorces and lives alone with that child. She passes through six situations, with many changes.  

A new study by Davide Gritti and Stefani Scherer (both University of Trento), published in the European Journal of Population, looks at how this kind of family complexity relates to wealth later in life. They found that women like Elena would be much likelier to hold more wealth after 50 – surprising when divorce and single motherhood are known to be poverty risk factors.  

Investigating the cumulative effects of marriage, divorce, having children and co-living with Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe data 

While the main SHARE interviews ask people about their wealth after 50, it is the special SHARELIFE interview that asks them to recount their partnerships, children and living arrangements across their lives. By combining the two sources, the authors could follow each person's family life year by year from 15 to 50 and set it against what they owned later.  

Gritti and Scherer analysed data for 30,509 people born between 1932 and 1962 in ten countries with available retrospective family-history data: Austria, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark, Greece, Switzerland, and Belgium. 

The concept of family complexity is naturally tricky to pin down. Here the study authors measure it using the “family complexity index”, a combination of how often someone moved from one living situation to another, and how many different situations they spent time in. The index ranges from 0 (an entire adult life spent in one situation) to 1 (the most changes and variety possible). These situations could be living with parents, living single, cohabiting, married, or divorced, with an additional grouping for each stage lived with or without children. SHARE participants were classified into three groups: below, roughly around, or above the international average for family complexity. 

Wealth means the sum of household real assets (like the value of any properties, businesses, cars) and net financial assets (like bank accounts, bonds, stocks, savings). Personal wealth for people in couples was calculated as household wealth split equally between partners. 

A Southern European pattern 

Eventful family lives were found to be rare in Southern Europe. Only 9% of Southern Europeans fell into the high-complexity group, compared with 44% in Scandinavia and 29% in Continental Europe. Most Southern Europeans followed the traditional path of leaving the parental home to marry, so those who didn’t are a small and unusual group. 

In Spain, Italy and Greece, wealth rises steadily with family complexity for both women and men. Women in the most eventful group have about €40,000 more personal net wealth after age 50 than women whose family lives were of average complexity. For men, the difference is about €17,000. 

Much of this gap seems to trace back to education. Higher-educated Southern Europeans are both wealthier and more likely to have had eventful family lives. When women with the same level of education are compared, the wealth advantage shrinks and is no longer statistically clear-cut. 

The type of family path does not explain the pattern. Strangely, the advantage stays almost unchanged after accounting for whether someone divorced, cohabited before marriage, or formed a couple late. 

Why might eventful lives pay off in the South? 

Research has generally expected eventful family lives to be costly. Repeated moves, separations and new households disrupt saving and make long-term financial planning harder. 

Gritti and Scherer suggest the Southern pattern comes down to who departs from tradition. In societies with strong family norms, the women who lived more eventful family lives may have been more economically independent, with stronger ties to paid work. The study does not test this directly. 

A different picture elsewhere 

In Scandinavia and Continental Europe, wealth tended to peak at moderate complexity. Both ends of the spectrum come with lower wealth. 

At the low end, people with the least eventful family lives hold less wealth than those in the middle. Very low complexity can mean long periods of living single, or an early partnership that never developed further. Such lives miss out on what a stable partnership can offer: shared costs, joint investment and pooled risks. 

At the high end, Scandinavian men with highly eventful family lives hold less wealth than those with average complexity. Eventful family lives are widespread and socially accepted in Scandinavia, yet the authors argue that acceptance and generous welfare states do not fully offset the economic toll of repeated transitions. 

The two ends therefore come with lower wealth for opposite reasons: limited opportunity at the low end, disruption at the high end. 

What it means 

Across Europe, education explains part of these patterns but not all of them. The authors conclude that family histories add a layer of inequality on top of education. 

They draw policy lessons at both ends. Support for economic recovery after separation matters, especially for women in Continental Europe, who have lower wealth at both extremes. But people with very settled or solitary family lives may also need attention, particularly where buying a home depends on living as a couple. 

The results describe associations, not causes. Having a more eventful family life does not by itself make anyone wealthier. 

Things to bear in mind 

A few choices shape how the findings should be read. For couples, wealth is household wealth split equally between partners, so inequalities within couples are hidden and gender gaps are probably understated.  

The cohorts studied also formed their families between the late 1940s and the early 2010s. As complex families become less unusual in Southern Europe, the people living them may look less selective, and the wealth pattern may change. 

Interested in conducting research with SHARE’s life history data? Click HERE