EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Heterogeneous bequests and social inequalities

Kirill Borissov, Stefano Bosi, Thai Ha-Huy and Mikhail Pakhnin

Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2025, vol. 29, -

Abstract: We study a growth model with two types of agents who are heterogeneous in their degree of family altruism. We prove that every equilibrium path of consumption, bequests, and capital converges to a unique steady state and study the effect of altruism on the properties of steady-state equilibrium. We show that aggregate income is positively related to both level of altruism and altruism heterogeneity. When altruism heterogeneity is low or moderate, income inequality follows an inverse U-shaped pattern relative to the level of altruism. These observations are consistent with the cross-country Kuznets curve linking different steady-state levels of income to steady-state levels of inequality. When altruism heterogeneity is high, income inequality decreases with the level of altruism. Our results suggest that heterogeneous altruism is a possible mechanism linking economic growth and income inequality.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Bequests and Social Inequalities (2023) Downloads
Working Paper: Heterogeneous bequests and social inequalities (2023) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:29:y:2025:i::p:-_67

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Macroeconomic Dynamics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:29:y:2025:i::p:-_67