Abstract The role of inherited wealth in modern economies has increasingly come under scrutiny. This study presents one of the first attempts to shed light on how demographic aging could shape this role. It shows that, in the absence of retirement annuities, or for a given level of annuitization, both increasing longevity and decreasing fertility should reduce the inherited share of total wealth in a given economy. Thus, aging is not likely to explain a recent surge in this share in some advanced economies. Shrinking retirement annuities, however, could offset and potentially reverse these effects. The paper also shows that individual bequests will be more unequally distributed if aging is driven by a drop in fertility. In comparison, the effect of increasing longevity on their distribution is non-monotonic.

中文翻译：

---

遗传的不平等：人口老龄化和养老金改革如何改变财富的代际传递

摘要继承财富在现代经济中的作用日益受到审查。这项研究提出了最早的尝试之一，以阐明人口老龄化如何影响这一角色。它表明，在没有退休年金的情况下，或在给定的年金水平下，延长寿命和降低生育率都将减少给定经济中总财富的继承份额。因此，在某些发达经济体中，老龄化不可能解释这一份额最近的增长。但是，退休年金的减少可能会抵消并有可能扭转这些影响。该论文还表明，如果衰老是受生育力下降的驱动，那么各个遗产的分配将更加不均衡。相比之下，延长寿命对其分布的影响是非单调的。