Through 2045, an estimated $84 trillion will be passed down from the baby boom generation to their millennial and Gen X heirs, with the wealthiest 10 percent of households expected to give and receive the majority of the wealth, the New York Times reports.

According to the Times, in 1989, total family wealth in the United States was about $38 trillion, adjusted for inflation. By 2022, that wealth had more than tripled, reaching $140 trillion, with boomers largely benefiting from price growth in the financial and housing markets. Since 1983, the average price of a house in the U.S. has risen about 500 percent, and the stock market, as measured by the benchmark S&P 500 index, is up by more than 2,800 percent. Of the $84 trillion projected to be passed down from older Americans to Gen X and younger heirs through 2045, $16 trillion will be transferred within the next decade.

Amid what has been described as the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer in U.S. history, which is ongoing, the wealthiest 10 percent of households—including the predominantly white top 1 percent—will dictate the broadest share of the transfer, with the more diverse bottom 50 percent accounting for only 8 percent. According to the financial research firm Cerulli Associates, high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals—those with at least $5 million and $20 million in cash or easily cashable assets—make up only 1.5 percent of all households, and together, constitute 42 percent of the volume of expected transfers through 2045. Conversely, according to the Realtime Inequality Tracker, in 2022, the bottom 50 percent of households had an average annual income of about $28,000. In research conducted by Fiona Greig, the global head of investor research and policy for Vanguard, “all but the most wealthy” are on a trajectory to be financially unprepared to retire to some degree.

Legally approved forms of tax avoidance are a major tool of wealth preservation. According to the U.S. tax code, individuals can transmit up to $12.9 million to heirs ($26 million for married couples), either during life or at death. As a result, although high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals could inherit more than $30 trillion by 2045, their prospective taxes on estates and transfers is $4.2 trillion.

“People are following the law just fine,” Morris Pearl, 60, a former managing director at BlackRock, the largest asset management firm in the world, and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a nonprofit group of well-heeled Americans pushing for the wealthy to pay much more in taxes, told the Times. “I generally don’t pay much taxes.”

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