Description

The idea of a Universal Inheritance (UI) has been recently gaining weight amongst scholars concerned over increasing wealth inequality. A UI consists of a one-off public payment of an agreed sum to each citizen of young adulthood. In this article, we provide the results of novel simulations to assess the cost and the distributive impact of such policy by testing different parameters for both the benefit amount and its financing. The simulations run on a top-tail adjusted version of the Household Financial Consumption Survey covering four countries: Finland, Germany, Ireland, and Italy. We find that, under some parameters, a UI would significantly reduce inequality and could be realistically financed by taxing the top 1%.

Citation: Vidal Lorda, G., Thiemann, A., Salazar, L. and Noguera, J.A., Distributional and Financial Impact of Universal Inheritance in four European countries, European Commission, 2023, JRC134659.

Practical information

Languages: English
Publisher: European Commission
JRC Number: JRC134659

Distributional and Financial Impact of Universal Inheritance in four European countries

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