12
May
2022
The influence of intergenerational transfers on wealth inequality in rich countries revisited
with Philippe Van Kerm (LISER and University of Luxembourg)
Webinar
Live online event
03:00 pm
04:00 pm

The Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) and the International Microsimulation Association (IMA) would like to invite you to the joint LISER-NUIG-IMA Microsimulation and Inequality Global Webinar Series that takes place on the 2nd Thursday of every month at 14:00 Luxembourg time (08:00 Washington, 22:00 Sydney).

This seminar aims to bring together the latest research using microsimulation techniques or addressing social inequalities. It provides a forum for networking, for discussing current research and for getting feedback from peers in the field in a friendly and supportive environment. It is targeted both at academics and public policy analysists.

The influence of intergenerational transfers on wealth inequality in rich countries revisited
Presenter: Philippe Van Kerm (LISER and University of Luxembourg)

Abstract

Joint with Salvatore Morelli, Brian Nolan and Juan Palomino.

This paper presents a comparative investigation of the role that receipt of intergenerational wealth transfers plays in influencing wealth inequality in rich countries. This paper employs an influence function regression approach to estimate the impact on wealth inequality of a marginal increase in the proportion of recipients 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 existing  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 inequality, 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.

Please note that the seminar is delayed by one hour exceptionnally and will start at 3 PM Luxembourg time.


Practical information
The seminar will be held on MS Teams. To get access to the seminar, please make sure to register! The link will be sent to your email address after you confirm your registration.

For further information, please contact the seminar co-organizers:



Dr. Denisa M. Sologon
Senior Research Economist, LISER
denisa.sologon@liser.lu



Prof. Cathal O’Donoghue,
NUIG
cathal.odonoghue@liser.lu