OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
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Siblings do not always benefit equally from parental wealth transfers. This study examines whether different wealth components evoke distinct distributive principles, thereby contributing to the explanation of unequal intergenerational transfers within families. Based on a multifactorial survey experiment in Germany (N=11,968 observations based on 2,992 respondents), we test whether the application of three distributive principles (equality, entitlement, dynastic succession) varies across cash, housing, and business assets. We deliberately oversampled substantial wealth owners, enabling us to highlight differences in attitudes toward wealth transfers between this group and a nationally representative sample. In line with previous research, equality emerges as the dominant principle for all asset types. Siblings’ gender and birth order do not affect evaluations of unequal transfers. However, wealthy respondents are less likely to endorse equality if one child seems better able to maintain the family business than their sibling. The affluent thus appear to legitimize unequal transfers based on concerns for continuous wealth accumulation and the perpetuation of key economic assets across generations.