接樓下話題，富貴有根嗎？美國的數據

根據美聯儲的2001數據，美國最富的1%家庭隻有9%是靠繼承得來的財富。另一研究講，隻有10%的身價幾百萬美金的人是靠繼承的。第三個研究指出，今天的百萬富翁，隻有2%的財富來自繼承。

 

By Robert Frank

My Krugman post brought a lot of emails asking about my assertion that “the vast majority of today’s rich didn’t inherit their money, but made it themselves.”

For the sake of brevity, I didn’t cite the research behind the statement. But since many of you have asked, and we aim to please here at the Wealth Report, here are my three main data points:

1. According to a study of Federal Reserve data conducted by NYU professor Edward Wolff, for the nation’s richest 1%, inherited wealth accounted for only 9% of their net worth in 2001, down from 23% in 1989. (The 2001 number was the latest available.)

2. According to a study by Prince & Associates, less than 10% of today’s multi-millionaires cited “inheritance” as their source of wealth.

3. A study by Spectrem Group found that among today’s millionaires, inherited wealth accounted for just 2% of their total sources of wealth.

Each of these stats measures slightly different things, yet they all come to the same basic conclusion: Inheritance is not the main driver of today’s wealth. The reason we’ve had a doubling in the number of millionaires and billionaires over the past decade (even adjusted for inflation) is that more of the non-wealthy have become wealthy.