- Preface
- Chapter
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- pp. xi-xiii
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Preface
I became interested in contemporary inheritance practices while doing research for a book that looked at elderly people and their relationship to their families. In the course of that research, I made the startling discovery that the health of our aging population is inextricably linked to wealth. This fact presents new and important economic, legal, and emotional challenges for the American family. Surprisingly, the topic had largely gone unaddressed by policy makers for decades. Consequently, I have chosen to use a wide sociological lens to better understand the social dimensions and implications of intergenerational transfers, bequests, and inheritance in the United States.
Chapter 1 describes how the transfer of wealth between generations is changing in every regard, thus giving rise to a new social contract in which family will increasingly play a larger role in minimizing risks in later life. A background of U.S. inheritance laws and attitudes from colonial to modern times is given in Chapter 2, which describes some pivotal focal events that underlie inheritance practices today. Chapter 3 examines intergenerational exchanges and wealth transfers from a cross-national perspective. I compare and contrast the current institutional arrangements of pension programs in the United States with those in other industrialized nations, including Sweden, France, and Italy, that are also undergoing dramatic demographic change and challenges in caring for their elderly citizens. The comparison of the old-age welfare state in Europe and the United States helps to further place the topic in context and illuminate the goal of creating policies designed to influence individual-level wealth accumulation.
In Chapter 4, I examine the massive differences among and within families regarding the extent of wealth and inter vivos transfers for college education, home mortgages, and other purposes. I summarize an abundance of statistical data based on nationwide household surveys of ethnically diverse families. The analyses shed light on the variation in gift giving and inheritance patterns across the life cycle. The focus of Chapter 4 is the generational differences between two cohorts, born from 1946 to 1964 (Baby Boom Generation) and those who grew up during the Depression era (Silent Generation). The lifelong shared experiences and events associated with each birth cohort have been found to influence attitudes toward retirement income security (Torres-Gil, 1992). I also look at gift-giving patterns for these different age groups across the economic spectrum, including people of non-Latino white, African American, Asian, and Mexican ancestry.
In Chapter 5, I use both biographical narratives and anecdotal evidence to explore the role of material exchanges in defining the moral ties between generations as they relate to gender, race, class, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. In so doing, I depart from traditional social scientific approaches to collecting data, relying instead on in-depth interviews of intergenerational transfers from the perspective of low-income families to upper-class men and women actively involved in faith-based organizations in Austin, Texas. The case study material reveals what is involved in the decision-making processes and helps to illustrate the generalizations drawn from the surveys.
Chapter 6 fleshes out the concept of contemporary inheritance practices by thinking about how wealth practices have changed over time. The chapter draws on nonquantitative data about patterns of material exchanges and the symbolic aspects of the meaning attached to gift giving from the perspective both of the parent and the adult child. The chapter highlights the centrality of “family ideology” concerning who owes what to whom and expectations regarding reciprocity gifts and bequests. Finally, the chapter specifically addresses filial expectations concerning who should give what to whom in adult child–parent relationships and how feelings of obligation may change as individuals age.
In Chapter 7, I discuss the legal and state institutions influencing the process by which older adults make decisions about gift giving. Extended life spans make estate transfers a lifelong process rather than something that occurs only upon a parent’s death. Today, the considerable costs of educating a child and providing a start in life can eat up what in earlier times might eventually have been received as an inheritance. There is a raging public debate on the roles of family, the market, and government in providing care to a loved one. A section focusing on the heart of the debate examines the financial burden of family caregiving. This chapter highlights the complex ethical issues that arise in trying to apply current policies related to the fair distribution of income and wealth across generations. In addition to examining the influence of elder attorneys on the decision-making process about gifting, I investigate the role of interest groups who act on behalf of the elderly population. The research provides empirical evidence on how interest groups such as AARP may interact with the family, the state, and individuals to influence ultimate financial behavior. The end of Chapter 7 summarizes the major social policy issues relating to inter vivos transfers, estate taxes, and inheritance taxes, and their consequences for the distribution of wealth and income.
Chapter 8 documents how political economics coupled with family ideology ultimately determine financial behavior during people’s later life. Policy recommendations are offered on how government can buttress the tie between parents and children. The chapter reviews past, current, and anticipated legislation and regulations of intergenerational policies, with special emphasis on how they relate to the costs of paying for old-age welfare programs. Specific laws include federal entitlements and state government practices of estate and inheritance taxation, gift income credit, guardianship laws, Medicaid spend-down (and asset transfer), and the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) Medicaid Estate Recovery programs. This section also assesses how current estate and gift tax laws exacerbate social inequality in the United States.
Finally, I devote the last chapter to a consideration of the importance of the different generational perspectives on intrafamilial income transfers. Toward that end, Chapter 9 synthesizes the major findings, providing a summary and overview of theoretical explanations of late-life gift-giving behavior. In addition, the chapter considers a future research agenda that examines the policy implications of gift giving and wealth transmission trends for generations to come. Lawmakers of all stripes are trying to gauge the costs of family fortunes and lack of wealth on “the state” as social welfare policies and programs profoundly alter the lives of nearly every American, including the young, workers, and persons entering retirement years.