TY  - JOUR
AU  - Brown,Jeffrey R.
AU  - Coile,Courtney C.
AU  - Weisbenner,Scott J.
TI  - The Effect of Inheritance Receipt on Retirement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12386
PY  - 2006
Y2  - July 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12386
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12386.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jeffrey Brown
Department of Finance
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
515 East Gregory Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
Tel: 217/333-3322
E-Mail: brownjr@illinois.edu

Courtney Coile
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA  02481
Tel: 781/283-2408
Fax: 781/283-2177
E-Mail: ccoile@wellesley.edu

Scott Weisbenner
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Finance
340 Wohlers Hall, MC-706
1206 South Sixth Street
Champaign, IL  61820
Tel: 217/333-0872
Fax: 217/244-9867
E-Mail: weisbenn@illinois.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-07-31
AB  - This paper uses the receipt of an inheritance to measure the effect of wealth shocks on retirement. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we first document that inheritance receipt is common among older workers %u2013 one in five households receives an inheritance over an eight-year period, with a median value of about $30,000. We find that inheritance receipt is associated with a significant increase in the probability of retirement. In particular, we find that receiving an inheritance increases the probability of retiring earlier than expected by 4.4 percentage points, or 12 percent relative to the baseline retirement rate, over an eight-year period. Importantly, this effect is stronger when the inheritance is unexpected and thus more likely to represent an exogenous shock to wealth.
ER  -