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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Nov 1.
Published in final edited form as: Eur Econ Rev. 2014 Nov 1;72:197–220. doi: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.10.003

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics of the control variables by inheritance receipt in the HRS

Variable No Inheritance Inheritance Small Inheritance Big Inheritance
Log Household Wealth 11.31 12.71*** 12.03 12.86***
Log Household Income 10.43 11.29*** 10.83 11.40***
Age 65.81 62.12*** 61.54 62.25**
Sex 0.42 0.46*** 0.45 0.46
Race
  White/Caucasian 0.81 0.95*** 0.92 0.95***
  Black/African American 0.14 0.03*** 0.05 0.03***
  Other 0.04 0.02*** 0.02 0.02
Census Region
  Northeast 0.16 0.14*** 0.14 0.13
  Midwest 0.25 0.31*** 0.32 0.31
  South 0.41 0.34*** 0.36 0.33*
  West 0.17 0.21*** 0.18 0.22***
  Other 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Household Size 2.29 2.27*** 2.36 2.25***
Number of Children 3.27 2.93*** 3.09 2.90***
Years of Education 12.18 13.86*** 13.29 13.99***
Health Status
  Excellent 0.13 0.19*** 0.17 0.20*
  Very Good 0.29 0.36*** 0.34 0.37*
  Good 0.31 0.29*** 0.30 0.29
  Fair 0.19 0.12*** 0.14 0.11**
  Poor 0.09 0.04*** 0.05 0.04*
Marital Status
  Married, Married spouse absent 0.66 0.78*** 0.75 0.79***
  Partnered 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03
  Separated/Divorced (categories 4 to 6) 0.10 0.08*** 0.10 0.07**
  Widow 0.18 0.09*** 0.10 0.08**
  Never Married 0.03 0.02** 0.02 0.02
Employment Status 0.41 0.53*** 0.53 0.53
Ever Smoked 0.58 0.57 0.60 0.56***
Health Insurance 0.83 0.79*** 0.77 0.80**
Mother died 0.02 0.13*** 0.11 0.13*
Father died 0.01 0.05*** 0.05 0.06*
Mother in law died 0.02 0.10*** 0.08 0.11***
Father in law died 0.01 0.04*** 0.03 0.04*
Widowed 0.03 0.02*** 0.02 0.02
Observations 146,165 6,859 1,233 5,626
*

p-value < 0.1,

**

p-value < 0.05,

***

p-value < 0.01

Notes: Author’s calculations on basis of the 1992–2010 HRS. Small Inheritance recipients are those that received an inheritance below 10,000 US dollars, and Big Inheritance recipients received amounts above that threshold. The asterisks denote whether the difference in means between non-recipients (column 2) and recipients (column 3) and between small (column 4) and big recipients (column 5) are statistically significant. Marital status is grouped into 5 categories for exposition reasons (see Table 8 for definitions of categories).