In addition to this anecdotal or indirect evidence, a serious effort has also been made on more than one occasion to study the question of a link between inherited wealth and lack of success, and the results are either inconclusive or fail to support a connection.

“ . . . [W]hat research exists shows that an inheritance doesn’t dramatically reduce a person’s desire to work.  That’s from “ Inheritance and Labor Supply, ” a 1994 study by David Joulfaian and Mark O. Wilhelm, published in the Journal of Human Resources.  They looked at people who inherited an average $344,000 in 1989 ($430,000 in today’s money).  Household earnings slipped just 0.1% for each 10% increment in the size of the inheritance.  Wilhelm says economists always figured the slack-off effect would be 10 to 100 times as big.

Meanwhile, there’s evidence that an inheritance fosters entrepreneurship.  Folks who inherit are more likely to start businesses, according to a paper by Princeton economist Harvey S. Rosen and others, in the RAND Journal of Economics in 1994.  Another Rosen paper showed that those who inherited more than $260,000 saw annual revenues grow 20% faster than other.  In part that’s because they had more capital than competitors from less-wealthy backgrounds, but the inheritors surely didn’t squander it. ”

Brigid McMenamin, “ Who’s Spoiled? ”, Forbes (June 12, 2000 at p. 269)

“ It’s true that studies have shown that people with sizable inheritances have lower work earnings, but so do people who become zoologists instead of lawyers.  Which job would you rather have if money were not a factor?

In fact, the effect is extraordinarily minuscule, according to data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The strongest impact is a slight drop in the hours worked by married women (i.e. mothers). Families use their inheritances to increase their consumption rather than avoid work.  As for the folk wisdom that compulsive accumulators make lousy parents, the truth seems to be that the rich and non-rich produce wastrels in roughly equal proportions. ”

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., “ Let’s Have More Heirs and Heiresses ” , Wall Street Journal (February 21, 2001 at p. A27).

Moreover, one would think that many factors have a greater influence on developing children into “ successful ” adults than how rich their family is. The relationship with parents is obviously central. Is that relationship always tainted or disrupted in some way by wealth?