Comparative research on income inequality has produced several coherent frameworks to study the institutional determinants of income stratification. In contrast, no such framework and much less empirical evidence exist to explain cross-national differences in wealth inequality. This situation is particularly lamentable as cross-national patterns of inequality in wealth diverge sharply from those in income. This talk seeks to pave the way for new explanations of cross-national differences in wealth inequality by tracing them to the influence of different wealth components.