The Importance of Gifts and Inheritances Among the Affluent

Michael Hurd () and Gabriela Mundaca

No 2415, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using data from the 1964 Survey of the Economic Behavior of the Affluent, we estimate directly the fraction of household assets which come from inheritances and the fraction from gifts. These data are well suited for this calculation because the survey is heavily weighted toward households with high incomes, and because the respondents were directly asked about the sources of their wealth. We estimate that 15-202 of household wealth came from inheritances and 5-102 from gifts. Even in households with very high incomes, very few people say that a large fraction of their assets were inherited or were given to them. According to the responses in this survey, it is not creditable that as much as 50% of household assets came from gifts and inheritances. Using data from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances with high income supplement, we roughly confirm the 1964 results, although the 1983 data are much less complete than the 1964 data.

Date: 1987-10
Note: AG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as In The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth. Robert E. Lipsey, and Helen Tice, eds. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1989.
Published as The Importance of Gifts and Inheritances Among the Affluent , Michael D. Hurd, B. Gabriela Mundaca. in The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth , Lipsey and Tice. 1989

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w2415.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: The Importance of Gifts and Inheritances Among the Affluent (1989)
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:nbr:nberwo:2415

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w2415

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().