马黑注：经济学人这篇文章有意思。

文章大意：近几十年，继承带来的财富，与工作带来的财富相比，越来越重要。人们之间经济地位上的差别，越来越不在于工作带来的收入有多高，而在于继承的财富有多少。造成此现象的原因是房地产市场的繁荣带来的房地产价值的增长，大大超过工作收入的增长，而工作收入增长的缓慢与经济增长放缓有关。比较早赶上好时机买下房产的人发了大财，孩子继承就成了一大笔财富。没有继承到父辈房产仅凭工作收入的人就买不起房子，由此带来的经济和社会后果就是，贫富两级分化，富人躺平不需要奋斗吃遗产就足够。穷人买不起房子，难以翻身，也失去了奋斗的动力。解决之道应该是：政府出面建造更多的房屋，征收足够的地产税，让更多的人买得起房子，发展经济降低房价与收入的比率，增加社会流动性，好日子会回来的。

经济学人：继承遗产变得几乎和工作一样重要

日期： 2025 年 2 月 27 日

主要内容

孩子们被告知，努力工作，你就会成功。近几十年来，这一建议对有才华和勤奋的人很有帮助。许多人已经自己发家致富，过着舒适的生活，无论他们继承了多少钱。然而现在，继承的财富的重要性在发达国家正在显得越来越重要，但这也产生了问题。

发达经济体的人们今年将继承约 6万亿美元——约占 GDP 的 10%，高于 20 世纪中叶一些富裕国家平均约 5% 的水平。自 20 世纪 60 年代以来，法国的年度遗产流动增加了一倍，自 1970 年代以来，德国的遗产流动几乎增加了两倍。年轻人是否能买得起房子并过上相对舒适的生活，不仅取决于他们自己的工作成功，还取决于继承的财富。这种转变产生了令人震惊的经济和社会后果，因为它不仅危及精英理想，也危及资本主义本身。

在某种程度上，继承热潮反映了社会变得更加富裕和老龄化。随着经济变得更加富裕，它们积累了人均资本——某人必须拥有的资本。但由于经济增长步伐放缓和房地产市场繁荣，财富相对于收入的规模急剧膨胀,收入相对于积累的财富急剧缩小。这种巨额财富和长久僵化的结合在欧洲最为明显，那里的生产率增长一直惨淡。

更多的财富意味着婴儿潮一代可以传承更多的遗产。由于财富分配比收入分配更加不平等，新的继承制正在诞生。

你可以从超级富豪的财富变化中看到这一点。在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，巨大的财产常常因投资不当、战争和通货膨胀而被破坏。据一项计算，如果1900年美国的富裕家庭被动投资股票市场，每年花费2%的财富，并拥有通常数量的孩子，那么今天的美国将有大约16,000名通过继承而来的亿万富翁。事实上，亿万富翁不到1000人，而且绝大多数都是白手起家。

然而，这些趋势正在被颠覆，或许是因为亿万富翁既在积累财富，又更善于保存财富。瑞银集团(UBS)的数据显示，2023年，有53人通过继承成为亿万富翁，与靠自己发家致富的84人相差不远。这可能是因为现在很容易将财富存入指数基金，并且财富管理的原理也得到了更好的理解。此外，许多政府还强制削减遗产税。

然而，继承制最引人注目的一点是，它不仅仅涉及超级富豪。典型的继承人是继承一栋普通房屋或其出售收益的人，而不是超级游艇或乡村堆积物。近几十年来，住房财富猛增，尤其是在伦敦、纽约和巴黎等顶级城市。那些有幸在长期繁荣之前购买房产的人赚了很多钱，并将意外之财传给了他们的继承人。因此，银行家和公司律师现在正在为已故出租车司机遗产中的房屋展开竞购战。由于纽约和伦敦等地的住房变得越来越难以负担，因此 90% 的人的收入已经太少，无法支付 90% 人的生活。你必须拥有大量资本——如果不是来自你父母的遗产，那么也来自父母银行。

如果你从整体上考虑这一点，继承财富日益增长的重要性开始变得清晰起来。在英国，六分之一的 20 世纪 60 年代出生的人预计将获得超过该一代十年平均年收入的遗产。对于 80 年代出生的人来说，这一比例上升至三分之一。与此同时，人们继承的财产的不平等令人震惊。 35 至 45 岁的人中，五分之一的遗产预计将少于 10,000 英镑（13,000 美元），而四分之一的人预计将继承超过 280,000 英镑。

对于自由市场的支持者来说，新继承制的崛起应该令人深感不安。首先，它创造了一个面临一系列不良激励的食利阶层。漏洞百出的税收制度意味着富人花大量时间玩弄规则。继承的财富资本最好用于更具生产力的用途，但为了保护自己的资产，房主成为邻避者，反对建设新房屋，使那些没有继承财富的人买不起住房。此外，新的食利者知道他们可以依靠他们的遗产，因此可能没有什么动力去工作或创新。

更令人担忧的是，非受益者的下层阶级越来越落在后面，而且越来越不满。如果房产变得越来越难买，舒适的生活越来越难实现，那么有抱负的年轻工人的奋斗动力就会减弱。当他们认为这个制度对他们不利时，他们对主流政党的支持就会减弱。

这就是为什么解决这个问题刻不容缓。如果希望通货膨胀和战争像 20 世纪那样摧毁财富，那就太疯狂了。本报长期以来一直认为遗产税是应对继承制的最公平工具。然而，这些税收如此不受欢迎，以至于各国政府不但没有强制执行，反而引入了一个又一个漏洞，提高了征收门槛，或者完全废除了它们。

幸运的是，还有其他补救措施。在正确的地方建造足够的房屋是政府为恢复工作与财富之间的关联性可以采取的最大行动。征收足够的年度财产税，特别是针对潜在土地价值的财产税，也会有所帮助，因为该税将被资本化为房价下跌，从而降低房价与收入的比率。欧洲迫切需要的任何促进经济增长的举措都会降低财富与国内生产总值的比率。精英政治的鼎盛时期带来了社会流动性、增长和繁荣，只要稍加努力，那些日子就可以回来。

英文原文：

Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working.

Citation metadata

Date: Feb. 27, 2025 From: The Economist

Main content

Work hard, children are told, and you will succeed. In recent decades this advice served the talented and the diligent well. Many have made their own fortunes and live comfortably, regardless of how much money they inherited. Now, however, the importance of hereditary wealth is rising around the rich world, and that is a problem.

People in advanced economies stand to inherit around $6trn this year—about 10% of GDP, up from around 5% on average in a selection of rich countries during the middle of the 20th century. As a share of output, annual inheritance flows have doubled in France since the 1960s, and nearly trebled in Germany since the 1970s. Whether a young person can afford to buy a house and live in relative comfort is determined by inherited wealth nearly as much as it is by their own success at work. This shift has alarming economic and social consequences, because it imperils not just the meritocratic ideal, but capitalism itself.

In part, the inheritance boom is a reflection of a wealthier and ageing society. As economies have become richer, they have accumulated capital per worker—capital that someone has to own. But because the pace of economic growth has slackened and housing markets have boomed, the scale of this wealth relative to incomes has ballooned. Nowhere is this combination of towering wealth and enduring sclerosis more evident than in Europe, where productivity growth has been dismal.

More wealth means more inheritance for baby-boomers to pass on. And because wealth is far more unequally distributed than income, a new inheritocracy is being born.

You can see this in the shifting fortunes of the super-rich. For much of the 20th century vast estates were often broken up by bad investing, or by war and inflation. By one calculation, if America's rich families in 1900 had invested passively in the stockmarket, spent 2% of their wealth each year and had the usual number of children, there would be about 16,000 old-money billionaires in America today. In fact, there are fewer than 1,000 billionaires and the vast majority of them are self-made.

These trends are being overturned, however, perhaps because billionaires are both amassing wealth and are better at preserving their riches. In 2023, 53 people became billionaires thanks to inheritance, not far short of the 84 who made their own fortunes, according to UBS, a bank. That may be because it is now easy to park wealth in an index fund, and the principles of wealth management are better understood. Moreover, many governments have obligingly cut inheritance taxes.

The most striking thing about the inheritocracy, though, is that it is not just about the uber-rich. The typical heir is someone inheriting a normal house, or the proceeds from its sale, not a superyacht or a country pile. And housing wealth has rocketed in recent decades, especially in apex cities like London, New York and Paris. Those who were fortunate enough to buy property before the long boom have made lots of money, passing on a windfall to their heirs. As a consequence, bankers and corporate lawyers now fight bidding wars over houses from the estates of deceased taxi drivers. As housing has become ever more unaffordable in places like New York and London, so a 90th-percentile income has become too small to pay for a 90th-percentile life. You must have significant capital, too—if not from your parents' estate, then from the Bank of Mum and Dad.

If you consider this as a whole, the growing importance of inheritance starts to become clear. In Britain one in six of those born in the 1960s is projected to receive an inheritance that exceeds ten years of average annual earnings for that generation. For those born in the 1980s, the ratio rises to one in three. The inequality of what people inherit, meanwhile, is startling. A fifth of 35- to 45-year-olds are expected to inherit less than £10,000 ($13,000), whereas a quarter are expected to inherit more than £280,000.

For supporters of free markets, the rise of the new inheritocracy should be deeply disturbing. For a start, it creates a rentier class that faces a series of bad incentives. A loophole-ridden tax system means that the wealthy spend a lot of time gaming the rules; it would be better used to direct their capital to more productive uses instead. To protect their assets, homeowners become nimbys, blocking building and making housing unaffordable for those without inherited wealth. Knowing they can rely on their inheritance, moreover, the new rentiers may face little incentive to work or innovate.

More worrying still is how an underclass of non-beneficiaries is becoming increasingly left behind—and increasingly disaffected. If property becomes ever harder to buy, and a comfortable life harder to achieve, the incentive of young, aspirational workers to strive will be blunted. And when they believe that the system is stacked against them, their support for mainstream political parties withers.

That is why fixing the problem is urgent. It would be mad to wish that inflation and war destroy fortunes, as they did in the 20th century. This newspaper has long argued that inheritance taxes are the fairest tool to deal with inheritocracy. Yet the taxes are so unpopular that, instead of enforcing them, governments have introduced loophole after loophole, raised the threshold at which they apply, or dismantled them altogether.

Fortunately, there are other remedies. Building enough houses in the right place is the single biggest action governments can take to restore the link between work and wealth. Levying sufficient annual property taxes, especially those that target underlying land values, would also help, because the tax would be capitalised as a fall in house prices, bringing down house-price-to-income ratios. And anything that boosts economic growth, so desperately needed in Europe, would bring down wealth-to-GDP ratios. The heyday of meritocracy brought with it social mobility, growth and prosperity. With a little hard work, those days can return.