3 ms·

Average American inheritance: $177,000

1 points by jcklnruns 13y ago

nabla9 13y ago
Average income, average net wealth and now average inheritance. I'm sure that numerically literate HN readers understand why these numbers are misleading. Especially when you use them to compare America to other countries. Arithmetic mean does not give you look into life of average American. Median should be used instead.
- dalke 13y ago
  To break down nabia9's comment, there is no such thing as a negative inheritance, so the base is $0. Bill Gates is worth $67 billion, which is $200 per person. Warren Buffett has $53 billion, Larry Ellison has $43 billion, and so on. Get the list from http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2013/03/06/full-list-u-s-billionaires-of-2013/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2013/03/06/full-list... . The US billionaires have $1872.5 billion. Assuming all of that will be inherited (after all, 3 heirs of the Wal*Mart fortune are in the top 20), then that alone is $5,700 per person in the US, or over 3% of the "average American inheritance." Somehow, I don't think I'll get one cent of their fortunes. To get a sense of the distribution skew, in 2012 MSN reported "the median inheritance for today's baby boomers is only $64,000, according to a 2010 study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College" (http://money.msn.com/gen-x/banking-on-inheritance-good-luck-investopedia.aspx http://money.msn.com/gen-x/banking-on-inheritance-good-luck-... , referencing http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-important-are-inheritances-for-baby-boomers/ http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-important-are-inheritances-for-... ). Many web pages reference that source, but note that it's only talking about what baby boomers would get from their parents, and not what (say) a baby boomer who dies now might leave to any heirs. There's a 2007 comment at http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2007/04/dont_count_on_a.html http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2007/04/dont_count_on_a.html quoting a MoneyCentral piece: "The median inheritance was $37,700. About 1% of those surveyed received an inheritance greater than $1 million, and 5% inherited between $250,000 and $1 million." In any case, both of these median values are well less than the $177,000 "average."

1 points by jcklnruns 13y ago

Average income, average net wealth and now average inheritance. I'm sure that numerically literate HN readers understand why these numbers are misleading. Especially when you use them to compare America to other countries. Arithmetic mean does not give you look into life of average American. Median should be used instead.

dalke 13y ago
To break down nabia9's comment, there is no such thing as a negative inheritance, so the base is $0. Bill Gates is worth $67 billion, which is $200 per person. Warren Buffett has $53 billion, Larry Ellison has $43 billion, and so on. Get the list from http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2013/03/06/full-list-u-s-billionaires-of-2013/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2013/03/06/full-list... . The US billionaires have $1872.5 billion. Assuming all of that will be inherited (after all, 3 heirs of the Wal*Mart fortune are in the top 20), then that alone is $5,700 per person in the US, or over 3% of the "average American inheritance." Somehow, I don't think I'll get one cent of their fortunes. To get a sense of the distribution skew, in 2012 MSN reported "the median inheritance for today's baby boomers is only $64,000, according to a 2010 study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College" (http://money.msn.com/gen-x/banking-on-inheritance-good-luck-investopedia.aspx http://money.msn.com/gen-x/banking-on-inheritance-good-luck-... , referencing http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-important-are-inheritances-for-baby-boomers/ http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-important-are-inheritances-for-... ). Many web pages reference that source, but note that it's only talking about what baby boomers would get from their parents, and not what (say) a baby boomer who dies now might leave to any heirs. There's a 2007 comment at http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2007/04/dont_count_on_a.html http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2007/04/dont_count_on_a.html quoting a MoneyCentral piece: "The median inheritance was $37,700. About 1% of those surveyed received an inheritance greater than $1 million, and 5% inherited between $250,000 and $1 million." In any case, both of these median values are well less than the $177,000 "average."