Clague, Christopher K. 1977. "Effects of Marital and Fertility Patterns on the Transmission and Distribution of Wealth." Journal of Human Resources 12(2):220-241.

Previous literature has discussed the role of assortative mating and of social class differences in fertility on the inheritance of financial wealth and the degree of wealth inequality. This paper argues that assortative mating and differential fertility play the same sort of role in the intergenerational transmission of human wealth. A path model of the intergenerational transmission of human wealth is constructed from correlations taken from the literature. Estimates are then derived of the extent to which permanent income inequality would be reduced by the elimination of assortative mating, of differential fertility, and of unwanted fertility.

The author is Associate Professor of Economics, University of Maryland. Research for this paper has been supported by grants from the Office of Economic Opportunity and from the Department of Labor to the Project on the Economics of Discrimination at the University of Maryland. Computer time was made available by the Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland. I would like to acknowledge helpful comments from Barbara Bergmann, John Conlisk, Robert Hauser, Randall Weiss, and the editor while absolving them of all responsibility for any errors.

© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

US ISSN 0022-166X

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