Intergenerational Wealth Mobility and the Role of Inheritance: Evidence from Multiple Generations

Adrian Adermon, Mikael Lindahl and Daniel Waldenström

No 10126, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This study estimates intergenerational correlations in mid-life wealth across three generations, and a young fourth generation, and examines how much of the parent-child association that can be explained by inheritances. Using a Swedish data set we find parent-child rank correlations of 0.3–0.4 and grandparents-grandchild rank correlations of 0.1–0.2. Conditional on parents' wealth, grandparents' wealth is weakly positively associated with grandchild's wealth and the parent-child correlation is basically unchanged if we control for grandparents' wealth. Bequests and gifts strikingly account for at least 50 per cent of the parent-child wealth correlation while earnings and education are only able to explain 25 per cent.

Keywords: multigenerational mobility; bequests; mid-life wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2018, 128 (612), F482-F513

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10126.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Intergenerational Wealth Mobility and the Role of Inheritance: Evidence from Multiple Generations (2018)
Working Paper: Intergenerational wealth mobility and the role of inheritance: Evidence from multiple generations (2018)
Working Paper: Intergenerational wealth mobility and the role of inheritance: Evidence from multiple generations (2016)
Working Paper: Intergenerational wealth mobility and the role of inheritance: Evidence from multiple generations (2016)
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:iza:izadps:dp10126

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).