Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Economics
Second Department
Mathematics
Reader 1
Patrick Van Horn
Reader 2
Winston Ou
Rights Information
© 2025 Samantha S Ford
Abstract
This paper explores how altruistic motivations around bequests affect the distribution of wealth and consumption across generations. Using a two-period overlapping generations model with stochastic inheritance and distinct labor types, agents make decisions about consumption, savings, and bequests under CRRA utility. Altruism is modeled as a separate utility component, allowing the strength of intentional bequesting to vary across simulations.
Simulation results show that altruism reduces within-group wealth inequality: both rich and poor agents exhibit tighter, less skewed wealth distributions. However, between-group inequality increases, as rich agents capture a larger share of total wealth. The net effect is a modest decline in overall wealth inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient. Consumption inequality also falls slightly, driven by high-wealth agents reducing their consumption to leave larger bequests. Altruism amplifies the incentive to save rather than spend.
Taken together, these findings show that altruism doesn’t uniformly reduce inequality, it redistributes it.
Recommended Citation
Ford, Samantha, "Built to Last: Intergenerational Transfers and the Architecture of Inequality" (2025). Scripps Senior Theses. 2687.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2687
Interactive quarto document of thesis write up with code.
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
