Intergenerational wealth transfers and wealth inequality

The Institute of Economics will hold a seminar meeting as part of its Seminar Series on Thursday, May 26, 2022: Salvatore Morelli from the University of Roma Tre will present the paper "Intergenerational wealth transfers and wealth inequality".

Abstract:

This paper presents a comparative investigation of the role that receipt of inter- generational wealth transfers plays in influencing wealth inequality in rich countries. This paper employs a recentered influence function regression approach to estimate the impact on wealth inequality of a marginal increase in the proportion of recipi- ents of transfers of differing sizes. The analysis is applied to microdata from wealth surveys for six large rich countries. The results suggest, in accordance with exist- ing findings in the literature, that in most of these countries having more transfer recipients and correspondingly fewer non-recipients, or more recipients of small or medium-sized transfers, would be expected to reduce wealth inequality modestly. This reflects the fact that those transfer recipients are more concentrated around the middle of the wealth distribution than non-recipients. In contrast, increasing the proportion of recipients of large transfers generally increases overall wealth in- equality, reflecting the fact that recipients of large transfers are concentrated around the top of the wealth distribution compared to recipients of small transfers. Such empirical exercise could be used to identify the thresholds above which transfers become disequalizing, an informative feature for the design of inheritance tax policies.

The seminar will be held in blended mode. In person participation is possible and available seats are allocated on a first come first served basis. For online participation please use the following link.