Familiale Transmission sozialer Ungleichheit in der zweiten Lebenshälfte: Erbschaften und Vermögensungleichheit

Abstract

Social inequality is transmitted from parents to children in various ways. A large part of this transmission happens early in life and is then consolidated through schooling. The extent of his early transmission of social status through the family has been well documented by stratification and mobility research. What is still lacking, however, is the recognition that resource transfers – and by this, transfers of inequality – do not stop at the end of young adulthood but continue throughout the whole joint life course of the two generations (and even beyond). In the later phases of this generational ‚convoy’, the resource flow shifts from human capital transfers (or financial assistance for accumulating human capital) to financial transfers, either inter vivos or through bequests. In this chapter, we use longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to establish whether and how financial transfers among adult family generations change the societal distribution of wealth.