Determining Who’s Altruistic: Evidence from Estate Tax Data

The role of intergenerational altruism in explaining disparities between predicted and actual patterns of wealth accumulation is still unclear. Recent works suggests traditional testing methods may fail because altruism is in fact heterogeneous across the population. This paper uses a heretofore unexamined data set to attempt to identify demographic characteristics that may be correlated with indications of intergenerational altruism. I find bequests are more likely to be distributed in a manner consistent with intergenerational altruism when the decedent is not survived by a spouse, when the beneficiary is female, or when the decedent did not give significant inter vivos gifts. Female decedents in particular appear to be much more altruistic towards female beneficiaries than they are to male beneficiaries. The giving of charitable bequests and estate size appear to have no effect on bequest distribution. JEL Codes: D12, D19, D31, D64