Death, Deeds, and Descendents

Death, Deeds, and Descendents
Author: Remi Clignet
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351523449

Clignet's analysis of inheritance patterns in modern America is the first sustained treatment of the subject by a sociologist. Clignet shows that even today inheritance serves to perpetuate both familial wealth and familial relations. He examines what leads decedents to chose particular legal instruments (wills, trusts, insurance policies, gifts inter vivos) and how, in turn, the instrument chosen helps explain the extent and the form of inequalities in bequests, of a result of the gender or matrimonial status of the beneficiaries. The author's major is to identify and explain the most significant sources of variations in the amount and the direction of transfers of wealth after death in the United States. He uses two kinds of primary data: estate tax returns filed by a sample of male and female beneficiaries to estates in 1920 and 1944, representing two successive generations of estate transfers, and publicly recorded legal instruments such as wills and trusts. In addition, Clignet draws widely on secondary sources in the fields of anthropology, economics, and history. His findings reflect substantive and methodological concerns. The analysis underlines the need to rethink the sociology of generational bonds, as it is informed by age and gender. Death, Deeds, and Descendants underscores the variety of forms of inequality that bequests take and highlights the complexity of interrelations between the cultures of the decedents' nationalities and issues like occupation and gender. Inheritance is viewed as a way of illuminating the subtle tensions between continuity and change in American society. This book is an important contribution to the study of the relationship between sociology of the family and sociology of social stratification.

Death, Deeds, and Descendants

Death, Deeds, and Descendants
Author: Rémi Clignet
Publisher: AldineTransaction
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1992
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780202303987

Clignet's analysis of the processes of biological, economic, and cultural reproduction at work in inheritance patterns in modern America is the first sustained treatment by a sociologist. Using the concept of reproduction to organize his data, Clignet shows that even today inheritance serves to perpetuate both familial wealth and familial relations. He examines how decedents chose particular legal instruments (wills, trusts, insurance policies, gifts inter vivos) and how, in turn, the instrument chosen contributes to explain the extent and the form of inequalities in bequests as a function of gender or matrimonial status of the beneficiaries. The author utilizes two kinds of primary data: the estate tax returns filed by a sample of male and female beneficiaries to estates in 1920 and 1944--representing two successive generations of estate transfers--and publicly recorded legal instruments such as wills and trusts. In addition, he draws widely on sources from secondary literature in the fields of anthropology, economics, and history. Clignet's book underscores the variety of forms of inequality that bequests take and highlights the complexity of interrelations between the cultures of the decedents' nationalities and issues like occupation and gender. Inheritance is viewed in long perspective as illustrative of the subtle tensions between continuity and change in American society. This book is an important contribution to the study of the relationship between sociology of the family and sociology of social stratification.

Transmitting Inequality

Transmitting Inequality
Author: Yuval Elmelech
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780742545854

In this authoritative study, Elmelech investigates the role that generational heritage plays in social stratification. Transmitting Inequality provides the essential theoretical framework for examining the institutional inequalities that shape the distribution of property and wealth in the United States.