The real horrors and injustice of inheritance

[moorobot]

A poster recently posted a link to the christian science monitor containing ostensible facts about inheritance. I decided to research this topic in some actual peer-reviewed, professor written, scholarly journals and found a piece by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis called 'The Inheritance of Inequality' in Journal of Economic Perspectives 16 (2002) 3-30. You can read the article for yourself if you want at Samuel Bowles website . Just click on frequently requested past papers, it is the second one listed.

First and foremost, I should mention that I did not learn of the following (first) fact from the paper, nor is it, strictly speaking, about inheritance. However, the poster of the last 'inheritance post' told us not to be worried about inheritance because it is redistributed by "voluntary transactions" anyway. Assuming it is redistributed, how does the market redistribute it? A: In the United States right now 1% of the people own 40-50% of the wealth, while 50% of the population have zero or a negative net wealth (If all their debts were called in they would be bankrupted). That is horrible and unjust, ethically and politically, for all the obvious reasons.

Secondly, although people cannot plausibly be held responsible for being born in Scarsdale as against being born in Harlem, we can predict with a good deal of accuracy where they will finish up just from the knowledge of their place of birth. An example from the above linked paper illustrates this: in the U.S. the ammount of advantage and disadvantage that is transmitted from one generation to the next is striking. Furthermore, this is an example based on income, not wealth, which is even easier to transfer, of course.

'A son born to the top decile has a 22.9 % chance of attaining the top decile and a 40.7 % chance of attaining the top quartile. The son of the poorest decile has a 1.3% chance of attaining the top decile and a 3.7% chance of attaining the top quintile. Children of the poorest decile have a 31.2% chance of occupying the lowest decile and a 50.7% of occupying the lowest quintile, while...the probabilty that a child of the richest decile ends up in the poorest decile is 2.4%, with a 6.8% chance of occupyingg the lowest quintile. [Studies] suggest that direct transmission mechanisms may be at work at various points of the income distribution. For example, wealth bequests may play a major role at the top of the income distribution, while at the bottom, vulnerability to violence or other adverse health episodes may be more important" pg 5 on the website article.

Real Equality of opportunity, where art thou?