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Understanding wealth—who has it, how they acquired it, how they preserve it—is crucial to addressing challenges facing the United States. Edward Wolff's account of patterns in the accumulation and distribution of U.S. wealth since 1900 provides a sober bedrock of facts and analysis. It will become an indispensable resource for future public debate

Inheritances are often regarded as a societal "evil," enabling great fortunes to be passed from one generation to another, thus exacerbating wealth inequality and reducing wealth mobility. That, however, is not the whole picture of inheritances in America. Clearly-written and illuminating, Inheriting Wealth in America expertly distills an abundance of data on inheritances into important takeaways for all who wonder about the current state of inheritances and gifts in the United States.

"I speculate that technological spillover effects may have become more important over time as IT penetrated the U.S. economy. The rationale is that IT may speed up the process of knowledge transfer and make these knowledge spillovers more effective. Using US input-output tables for years 1958, 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997, and 2007, I compare my new results with Wolff and Nadiri (1993) covering years 1947-1977 and Wolff (1997) covering 1958- 1987. I estimate that the direct rate of return to R&D is now 22% and the indirect rate of return to R&D is 37%. The former is higher than in the previous studies. The indirect rate of return to R&D is now significant at the one percent level, in comparison to a 10 percent significance level in Wolff (1997). The newly estimated social rate of return to R&D is 59%, compared to 53% in Wolff (1997). In contrast to the earlier studies, the coefficients of R&D embodied in new investment are now statistically significant at the five percent level. Separate regressions on the 1958-1987 and 1987-2007 periods and the addition of successive periods to the sample also suggest a strengthening of R&D spillovers between the 1958-1987 and 1987-2007 periods. A decomposition of TFP growth also indicates a higher contribution from R&D spillovers in the later period. These results suggest a strengthening of the R&D spillover effect over time"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Using data from both the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we found that on average over the period from 1984 to 2007, about one fifth of American households at a given point of time received a wealth transfer and these accounted for about a quarter of their net worth. Over the lifetime, about 30 percent of households could expect to receive a wealth transfer and these would account for close to 40 percent of their net worth near time of death. However, there is little evidence of an inheritance "boom." In fact, from 1989 to 2007, the share of households in the SCF reporting a wealth transfer fell by 2.5 percentage points. The average value of inheritances received among all households did increase but at a slow pace, by 10 percent, but wealth transfers as a proportion of current net worth fell sharply over this period, from 29 to 19 percent. We also found, somewhat surprisingly, that inheritances and other wealth transfers tend to be equalizing in terms of the distribution of household wealth. Indeed, the addition of wealth transfers to other sources of household wealth has had a sizeable effect on reducing the inequality of wealth"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. One of the most dramatic changes in the retirement income system over the last three decades has been a decline in traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans and a corresponding rise in defined contribution (DC) pensions. Have workers benefited from this change? Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, I find that after robust gains in the 1980s and 1990s, pension wealth experienced a marked slowdown in growth from 2001 to 2007. Projections to 2009 indicate no increase in pension wealth from 2001 to 2009. Retirement wealth is also found to offset the inequality in standard household net worth. However, I find that pensions had a weaker offsetting effect on wealth inequality in 2007 than in 1989. As a result, whereas standard net worth inequality showed little change from 1989 to 2007, the inequality of private augmented wealth (the sum of pension wealth and net worth) did increase over this period. These results hold up even when Social Security wealth and employer contributions to DC plans are included in the measure of wealth and when adjustments are made for future tax liabilities on retirement wealth"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

This book documents the growth of unproductive activity in the United States economy since World War II and its relation to the economic surplus, capital accumulation, and economic growth. Unproductive activities broadly consist of those involved in the circulation process, including wholesaling and retailing, banking and financial services, advertising, legal services, business services and many (though not all) government activities. The results indicate that the level of unproductive activity in the postwar economy has been a significant factor in the slowdown in the rate of capital accumulation, productivity growth and the overall growth rate. Here, the villain is shown to be the gradual but persistent shift of resources to unproductive activities. The consequence has been a reduction in new capital formation and productivity growth and an erosion in the rate of growth in per capita living standards. Moreover, the rise in unproductive activity is itself seen to be rooted in the logic of advanced capitalism. The forces of competition, which in the early stages of capitalism lead to rapid technical change and productivity growth, promote non-productive and even counterproductive activities in its more advanced stages