In this paper we describe a novel source of data on the full record of inheritance tax files in Italy, covering up to 63% of total deceased. The work documents a substantial rise in the total value of inheritance and gifts as a share of national income, from 8.4% in 1995 to 15.1% in 2016....

In this paper we describe a novel source of data on the full record of inheritance tax files in Italy, covering up to 63% of total deceased. The work documents a substantial rise in the total value of inheritance and gifts as a share of national income, from 8.4% in 1995 to 15.1% in 2016....

We link administrative data on tax returns across two generations of Italians to study the degree of intergenerational mobility. We estimate that a child with parental income below the median is expected to belong to the 44th percentile of its own income distribution as an adult, and the...