Empirical work on intergenerational transfers has focused on distinguishing between altruistic and exchange motivated behavior. However, these two models are unable to explain the strong tendency for estates to be divided equally across children, while inter vivos transfers are made unequally....

Each year parents transfer a great deal of money to their adult children. While intuition might suggest that these transfers are altruistic and made out of concern for the well-being of the children, empirical tests of the model have consistently yielded negative results. However, an important...