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Motives for Bequests within the Middle Class
by John P. Laitner and Amanda Sonnega
WP 2012-275
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- Using Health and Retirement Study data on the ratio of parent-to-child lifetime incomes, we analyze the motives behind bequests. We find support for an unintentional transfer model in which bequests arise from residual, unspent parent life-cycle resources.
- We find some evidence of altruistic bequest behavior, but the support seems limited.
- We show that our model can account for the frequency of dual inheritances that earlier work revealed.
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