Hybrid Format

Kinship Structure and Bequest Inequalities between Black and White Households in the United States, 1989-2019

Ole Hexel (MPIDR)
Laboratory of Population Dynamics and Sustainable Wellbeing, November 22, 2023

Hybrid Talk Seminar, November 6, 2023 from 11am to 12pm (CEST)

Abstract

This paper investigates the importance of kinship structure and mortality for bequest inequalities between Black and White households in the United States. Sample size issues previously precluded detailed analyses of these questions. We combine wealth data from household surveys with kinship structures derived from demographic microsimulations to overcome these limitations. We find that bequests to children of white fathers are 3 to 4 times than bequests to children of black fathers. Bequests occur mostly late the recipients’ lives , with little black-white differences, but the variation is large. The Great Recession of 2008 reduced overall bequest amounts and absolute black-white differences, but increased relative differences. Overall, economic period differences are larger than demographic differences.

About the speaker

Ole Hexel is a research scientist in the Department of Digital and Computational Demography in the Laboratory of Population Dynamics and Sustainable Wellbeing. He earned his PhD in sociology from Northwestern University and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris. His dissertation used survey data to analyze intra-familial financial gifts in different European countries. He has also worked on a meta-analysis of audit studies, a description of age, sex, and regional differences of Weibo audience estimates, and network measures of social inequality based on Swedish register data.