How inheritances shape wealth distributions: An international comparison

C-Tier
Journal: Economics Letters
Year: 2017
Volume: 159
Issue: C
Pages: 217-220

Authors (3)

Bönke, Timm (Freie Universität Berlin) Werder, Marten v. (not in RePEc) Westermeier, Christian (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

0.335 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We use data from the European Household Finance and Consumption Survey in order to examine the distributional effect of intergenerational wealth transfers on the net worth distribution in 8 European countries and compare it to recent findings for the US. To do so, we resort to the decomposition of the coefficient of variation as suggested and applied by Wolff (1987, 2002, 2015) and Wolff and Gittleman (2014). The results seem to imply that inheritances and gifts have a vastly equalizing effect on inequality in household wealth in all 8 countries.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:ecolet:v:159:y:2017:i:c:p:217-220
Journal Field
General
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-24