We study wealth inequality in childhood using Danish wealth records from three decades. While teenagers have some earnings, we estimate that transfers account for at least 50 percent of wealth at age 18, and much more so for the rich children. Inheritance from grandparents does not appear...

Using Danish administrative data, we estimate the impact of bequests on the level and inequality of wealth. We employ an event study design where we follow the distribution of wealth over time of people who are 45-50 years old, and divide them into treatment group and control group depending on...

This paper presents new homogeneous series on top wealth shares from 1916 to 2000 in the United States using estate tax return data. Top wealth shares were very high at the beginning of the period but have been hit sharply by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II shocks. Those...

I discuss available evidence about the evolution of top wealth shares in the United States over the last one hundred years. The three main approaches - Survey of Consumer Finances, estate tax multiplier techniques and capitalization method - generate generally consistent findings until mid-1980s...