To Leave or Not to Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives

Wojciech Kopczuk and Joseph Lupton ()

The Review of Economic Studies, 2007, vol. 74, issue 1, 207-235

Abstract: We examine the effect of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the desire to die with positive net worth. Using a structural life-cycle model nested in a switching regression with unknown sample separation, we find that roughly three-fourths of the elderly single population has abequest motive. Both the presence and the magnitude of the bequest motive are statistically and economically significant. On average, households with a bequest motive spend about 25% less on consumption expenditures. We conclude that, among the elderly single households in our sample, about four-fifths of their net wealth will be bequeathed and approximately half of this is due to a bequest motive. Copyright 2007, Wiley-Blackwell.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (213)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-937X.2007.00419.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: To Leave or Not To Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives (2005)
Working Paper: To leave or not to leave: the distribution of bequest motives (2004)
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:oup:restud:v:74:y:2007:i:1:p:207-235

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().