Kinship Structure and Bequest Inequalities between Black and White Households in the United States, 1989-2019

Ole Hexel , Max Planck Institut für demografische Forschung
Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Emilio Zagheni, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)

This paper investigates the joint role of mortality differentials and kinship structure for the wealth turnover among Blacks and Whites in the United States. The black-white wealth gap is one of the most persistent and best documented economic inequalities in the United States. We ask what the role of differential mortality and fertility is. We combine wealth data from household surveys with kinship structures derived from demographic microsimulations to overcome the limitations imposed by survey sample sizes. We find that surviving children of white fathers can expect 3 to 4 times higher bequests than same-age surviving children of black fathers. We also find that bequests occur late during the beneficiairies lives, with little black-white differences. The Great Recession of 2008 reduced overall bequest amounts and absolute differences between bequests left by black and white fathers, but increased relative differences.

See paper

 Presented in Session 90. Socio-economic Inequalities and Impacts