Excerpt

How Rigid is the Wealth Structure and Why? A Life-Course Perspective on Intergenerational Correlations in Wealth. Alexandra Killewald, July 2016, Paper, "Inequality in family wealth is high and rising. Yet we know little about how much and how wealth inequality is maintained across generations. We argue that a long-term, life-course perspective reflective of wealth’s cumulative nature is crucial to understand the extent and channels of wealth reproduction across generations. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that span nearly half a century, we attend to the life-cycle patterns of wealth attainment to reveal that intergenerational wealth correlations rise with age and are higher than previously believed. Furthermore, grandparental wealth is a unique predictor of grandchildren’s wealth, above and beyond the role of parental wealth, suggesting that a focus on only parentchild dyads underestimates the importance of family wealth lineages." Link