IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ihs/ihsesp/54.html

Equal Bequests and Parental Altruism: Compatibility or Orthogonality?

Author

Listed:
  • Stark, Oded

    (Department of Economics, University of Oslo)

Abstract

The large amount of equal division of bequests by parents who otherwise would have compensated the earning differences among their children is attributed to the cost associated with unequal bequests. This paper identifies a source of this cost and explains why equal bequests to children whose earnings differ, and parental altruism toward these children, are not mutually exclusive.

Suggested Citation

  • Stark, Oded, 1998. "Equal Bequests and Parental Altruism: Compatibility or Orthogonality?," Economics Series 54, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:54
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/1071
    File Function: First version, 1998
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stark, Oded & Zhang, Junsen, 2002. "Counter-compensatory inter-vivos transfers and parental altruism: compatibility or orthogonality?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 19-25, January.
    2. Francois-Charles Wolff & Seymour Spilerman & Claudine Attias-Donfut, 2005. "Do Parents Help More their Less Well-Off Children? Evidence from a Sample of Migrants to France," Microeconomics 0504001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Yang-Ming Chang, 2012. "Strategic transfers, redistributive fiscal policies, and family bonds: a micro-economic analysis," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 1481-1502, October.
    4. Yang-Ming Chang, 2007. "Transfers and bequests: a portfolio analysis in a Nash game," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 277-295, March.
    5. Elin Halvorsen & Thor O. Thoresen, 2011. "Parents' Desire to Make Equal Inter Vivos Transfers," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 57(1), pages 121-155, March.
    6. Shinichi Nishiyama, 2000. "Bequests, Inter Vivos Transfers, and Wealth Distribution: Technical Paper 2000-8," Working Papers 13332, Congressional Budget Office.
    7. Peters, Heiko & Schwarz, Peter, 2013. "Bequests and labor supply in Germany," TranState Working Papers 173, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    8. Yang-Ming Chang & Zijun Luo, 2015. "Endogenous division rules as a family constitution: strategic altruistic transfers and sibling competition," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(1), pages 173-194, January.
    9. Charles Horioka, 2014. "Are Americans and Indians more altruistic than the Japanese and Chinese? Evidence from a new international survey of bequest plans," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 411-437, September.
    10. Jellal, Mohamed & Wolff, Francois-Charles, 2007. "Gifts, bequests and family incentives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 313-318, March.
    11. Ramon L. Clarete & Ernesto M. Pernia & Ammielou Gaduena & Adrian Mendoza, 2014. "The Role of Science, Technology and Research in Economic Development," UP School of Economics Discussion Papers 201407, University of the Philippines School of Economics.
    12. Lundholm, Michael & Ohlsson, Henry, 2000. "Post mortem reputation, compensatory gifts and equal bequests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 165-171, August.
    13. Debra Friedman & Michael Hechter & Derek Kreager, 2008. "A Theory of the Value of Grandchildren," Rationality and Society, , vol. 20(1), pages 31-63, February.
    14. Fahle, Sean, 2025. "What do bequests in married couples with a surviving spouse tell us about bequest motives?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    15. Roger Faith & Brian Goff & Robert Tollison, 2008. "Bequests, sibling rivalry, and rent seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 397-409, September.
    16. Charles Yuji Horioka, 2014. "Why Do People Leave Bequests? For Love or Self-Interest? Evidence from a New International Survey of Bequest Plans," UP School of Economics Discussion Papers 201406, University of the Philippines School of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Doris Szoncsitz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deihsat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.