Unequal Bequests / Marco Francesconi, Robert A. Pollak, Domenico Tabasso.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Francesconi, Marco.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pollak, Robert A.

Tabasso, Domenico.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21692.

NBER working paper series no. w21692

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we make two contributions to the literature on end-of-life transfers. First, we show that unequal bequests are much more prevalent than generally recognized, with more than one-third of parents with wills planning to divide their estates unequally among their children. Plans for unequal division are particularly concentrated in complex families, i.e., families with stepchildren and families with genetic children with whom parents have limited or no contact. Second, we find that many older Americans have no wills. Although the probability of having a will increases with age, 30 percent of individuals aged 70 plus are without a will and, of the people who died between 1995 and 2012, nearly 40 percent died intestate.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2015.