Inheritance in Contemporary America

Jacqueline Angel's Johns Hopkins University Press study examines how Americans think about passing wealth across generations — drawing on empirical data, interviews, and case studies to address the legal, emotional, and policy dimensions of inheritance. Reviewer Vern Bengtson called it 'socially relevant' with no direct comparable work, and the cross-disciplinary range is genuinely ambitious, touching gerontology, sociology, economics, and public policy. The honest limits are two: the writing is academic and dense, making it a difficult entry point for general readers, and demographic and policy data from 2008 has been overtaken by events. A solid scholarly contribution for specialists in aging and estate policy; a hard sell for anyone outside that lane.