We found that on average over the period from 1989 to 2007, 21 percent of American households at a given point of time received a wealth transfer and these accounted for 23 percent of their net worth. Over the lifetime, about 30 percent of households could expect to receive a wealth transfer and...

This paper examines the role of bequests and of taxation on bequests for the distribution of wealth. We investigate a model with overlapping generations and heterogenous households where parents derive utility directly from their bequests. Using the coefficient of variation as the measure of...

This paper finds that individuals in Japan do not leave very significant bequests, that parents often require a quid pro quo for bequests to their children, and that wealthier individuals leave less bequests, meaning that bequests ameliorate wealth inequalities.

This paper focuses on three issues. First, it analyses the increasing inequality of wealth in Sweden in terms of percentile age and birth cohort differences. Second, it discusses mobility of wealth as a function of age, length of the transition period, the magnitude of quantile differences, and...

To help shed light on the implications of intergenerational transfers for wealth inequality, this paper uses data for Japan and the United States to examine whether individuals who receive intergenerational transfers from their parents are more likely to leave bequests to their children than...

This report examines the inheritances that are likely to be received by those living in England who were born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. We explore the age at which inheritances are likely to be received and the amounts that we expect to be inherited, focusing on key inequalities in each....

Inheritances have been growing as a share of national income in the UK since the 1970s. This trend looks set to continue as generations at older ages hold more wealth than their immediate predecessors but younger generations have no higher incomes than the generations born just before them. What...

Transfers from parents-either in the form of gifts or inheritances-have received much attention as a source of inequality. This paper uses a 19-year panel of administrative data for the population of Norway to examine the share of the Total Inflows available to an individual (defined as the...

Der Beitrag stellt ausgewählte aktuelle Befunde zum Erbschafts- und Schenkungsgeschehen dar und analysiert den Einfluss von Erbschaften auf das Vermögen. Aus der Längsschnittperspektive auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) wird geklärt, wie weit die Vermögensübertragungen durch...