Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/145019 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 5984
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
The role of inherited wealth in modern economies has increasingly become under scrutiny. This study presents one of the first attempts to shed light on how demographic aging could shape this role. We show that, in the absence of retirement annuities, or for a given level of annuitization, both increasing longevity and decreasing fertility should reduce the inherited share of total wealth in a given economy. Thus, aging is not likely to explain a recent surge in this share in some advanced economies. Shrinking retirement annuities, however, could offset and potentially reverse these effects. We also show that aging could increase the size of individual bequests vis-à-vis real wages. However, these bequests will be more unequally distributed if aging is driven by a drop in fertility. In comparison, the effect of increasing longevity on their distribution in non-monotonic.
Subjects: 
inherited wealth
inheritance
aging
inequality
social security
JEL: 
D14
D31
D64
D91
E21
H55
J11
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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