
Average American inheritance: $177,000 - jcklnruns
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/13/retirement/american-inheritance/?google_editors_picks=true
======
nabla9
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
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...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2013/03/06/full-list-u-s-
billionaires-of-2013/) . 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-...](http://money.msn.com/gen-x/banking-on-inheritance-good-luck-
investopedia.aspx) , referencing [http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-important-are-
inheritances-for-...](http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-important-are-inheritances-
for-baby-boomers/) ).

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."

