IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/mpifgd/096.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trust and estate planning: The emergence of a profession and its contribution to socio-economic inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Harrington, Brooke

Abstract

This paper offers a fresh perspective on the connection between professional work and socio-economic inequality by tracing the emergence of the trust and estate planning profession in America. Unlike studies of inequality and the professions that focus on the status attainment of individuals and their families, or on labor market segregation, this paper explores professional work as a means of creating and reproducing larger systems of socio-economic stratification. Trust and estate planners contribute to macrolevel inequality by helping wealthy clients accumulate large fortunes and pass them on to their descendants; this, in turn, has shaped the status and composition of other professions. As sources of economic power have changed moving from land and factories to more fungible forms the need for legal, organizational and financial strategies to protect assets from taxation, creditors, and spendthrift heirs intensified, catalyzing the transformation of trust and estate planners from amateurs to professionals. Thus, trust and estate planners are both products and producers of the changing worlds of work and wealth. To shed light on these transformations, this paper will draw on the literatures of sociology, economics and anthropology, focusing on these professionals' three critical roles as investors, administrators, and guardians of wealth in reproducing systems of stratification.

Suggested Citation

  • Harrington, Brooke, 2009. "Trust and estate planning: The emergence of a profession and its contribution to socio-economic inequality," MPIfG Discussion Paper 09/6, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:096
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/36521/1/607267240.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul A. Samuelson, 1958. "An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66, pages 467-467.
    2. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    3. Bernheim, B Douglas & Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "The Strategic Bequest Motive," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 151-182, July.
    4. Duangkamon Chotikapanich & D. S. Prasada Rao & William E. Griffiths & Vicar Valencia, 2007. "Global Inequality: Recent Evidence and Trends," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2007-01, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bill Maurer, 2012. "Finance 2.0," Chapters, in: James G. Carrier (ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, Second Edition, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arrondel, Luc & Masson, Andre, 2001. " Family Transfers Involving Three Generations," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 103(3), pages 415-443, September.
    2. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669, Elsevier.
    3. Lakshmi K. Raut, 1996. "Subgame perfect manipulation of children by overlapping generations of agents with two-sided altruism and endogenous fertility," Labor and Demography 9604003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Hippolyte d’ALBIS & Dalal MOOSA, 2015. "Generational Economics and the National Transfer Accounts," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(4), pages 409-441, December.
    5. Andrea Ajello & Nina Boyarchenko & François Gourio & Andrea Tambalotti, 2022. "Financial Stability Considerations for Monetary Policy: Theoretical Mechanisms," Staff Reports 1002, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    6. Scholten, Ulrich, 1999. "Die Förderung von Wohneigentum," Beiträge zur Finanzwissenschaft, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, edition 1, volume 8, number urn:isbn:9783161472343, September.
    7. Lakshmi K Raut, 2004. "Learned Convention and Subgame Perfect Equilibrium in an Overlapping Generations Model with Two-Sided Altruism," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000000172, David K. Levine.
    8. Robinson, James A. & Srinivasan, T.N., 1993. "Long-term consequences of population growth: Technological change, natural resources, and the environment," Handbook of Population and Family Economics, in: M. R. Rosenzweig & Stark, O. (ed.), Handbook of Population and Family Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1175-1298, Elsevier.
    9. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    10. Lakshmi K Raut, 1997. "Learning to Perfect Manipulation: Implications for Fertility, Savings, and Old-Age Social Security," Working Papers 199704, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    11. Daisuke Ikeda & Toan Phan, 2016. "Toxic asset bubbles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(2), pages 241-271, February.
      • Daisuke Ikeda & Toan Phan, 2016. "Toxic asset bubbles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(2), pages 241-271, February.
    12. Franklin Allen & Gary B. Gorton, "undated". "Rational Finite Bubbles," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 41-88, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    13. Koumparoulis, Dimitrios, 2006. "Ευρωπαϊκή Δημοσιονομική Πολιτική Και Οικονομική Μεγέθυνση: Η Νεοκλασική Οικονομική Θεωρία Για Την Περίπτωση Της Ελλάδας [European Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth: The Neoclassical Economic Theory," MPRA Paper 44310, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. holmes, james, 2019. "Why do firms incorporate and what difference does it make?," MPRA Paper 93313, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Zou, Tieding, 2016. "人口冲击、环境变动与家庭养老——基于多因素分解视角 [Effects of Population and Environment Changing on Family Pension——Based on the perspective of Its Factors]," MPRA Paper 79760, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 16 Jan 2017.
    16. Wolff, Francois-Charles & Laferrere, Anne, 2006. "Microeconomic models of family transfers," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 889-969, Elsevier.
    17. Goedde-Menke, Michael & Lehmensiek-Starke, Moritz & Nolte, Sven, 2014. "An empirical test of competing hypotheses for the annuity puzzle," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 75-91.
    18. Tobias C. Vogt & Fanny A. Kluge, 2013. "Care for money? Mortality improvements, increasing intergenerational transfers, and time devoted to the elderly," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2013-014, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    19. Huang, Haijie & Lee, Edward & Lyu, Changjiang & Zhao, Yiyi, 2020. "Bequest motive, information transparency, and family firm value: A natural experiment," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    20. Fousseynou Bah, 2011. "A Simultaneous Determination of the Inter Vivos Transfer and the Unemployment Duration: the Malian case," Working Papers halshs-00630262, HAL.

    More about this item

    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:zbw:mpifgd:096. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mpigfde.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.