NEW EVIDENCE ON ALTRUISM - A STUDY OF TIAA-CREF RETIREES

This paper investigates the role in household wealth accumulation of s aving for bequests. It employs data from a 1988 survey of TIAA-CREF an nuitants designed to measure pension and other net worth, as well as l ifetime earnings. About half of the households in the data plan to lea ve estates, and we find that their behavior conforms with theoretical altruistic models. For the same families, the amount of wealth which w e attribute to estate building is large. Nevertheless, altruism toward s one's children does not seem to be the major explanation of saving i n the overall sample.