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Bequests and Heterogeneity in Retirement Wealth

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  • Mariacristina De Nardi
  • Fang Yang

Abstract

Households hold vastly heterogenous amounts of wealth when they reach retirement, and differences in lifetime earnings explain only part of this variation. This paper studies the role of intergenerational transmission of ability, voluntary bequest motives, and the recipiency of accidental and intended bequests (both in terms of timing and size), in generating wealth dispersion at retirement, in the context of a rich quantitative model. Modeling voluntary bequests, and realistically calibrating them, not only generates more wealth dispersion at retirement and reduces the correlation between retirement wealth and lifetime income, but also generates a skewed bequest distribution that is close to the one in the observed data.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariacristina De Nardi & Fang Yang, 2014. "Bequests and Heterogeneity in Retirement Wealth," NBER Working Papers 20058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20058
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination

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