What percentage of Britons do/don't inherit?

buglawton

This page has stats that show a breakdown of on UK inheritances above £1,000:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_333036.pdf

What it does seem to not show is a distribution showing stats for everyone in the UK, so you can see what proportion of people inherit something vs those who don't inherit anything.

Do such stats exist?
(I looked for a more relevant topic group in MSE for this question but ended up here)

74jax

I've done a quick Google search but can't find anything sorry, is it for an assignment etc, what kind of stats are needed?

getmore4less

it says at the very begining 1.6 million adults inherit there are about(very rough) 50million adults.

so in that given 2 year period 48+ million got nothing

later is says for any 2 year period between 4% and 5% get something.

what we don't know is how many are multiple times/overlaps so get something in their lifetime.


Then you have the cases where it is partners just getting the share of the property(if tenants in common) and other assets.

About 1/2 million people die each year and around 1/2 need probate/admim.

margaretclare

I don't know what a 'Briton' may be, but if you mean a UK citizen, I believe that the laws regarding inheritance are different in the 4 component nations.

I am an Englishwoman and I inherited nothing. There was nothing for me to inherit! DH is the same. We didn't inherit one penny-piece.

getmore4less

That's 1 so far going to take a while for the other 48 million to find the thread.


Don't give up yet 5% inherit from non family like friends and neighbours.
(that's of those that inherit not the population)

nearlyrich

I got £40 from a cousin of my mum's who died without a will nothing from my dad and £1500 from my mum but surely not every adult could inherit every year as we don't all lose a "rich" family member every year...

duchy

Also it's reasonable to assume the majority of married people leave their estate to their spouse and not their children ....and the older the spouse is the more likely they are to exhaust those funds (nursing costs, general living expenses higher than income from pensions etc) in which case there may be nothing left to inherit anyway (or they could re-marry a younger spouse who outlives them and inherits....or leave it all to an organization like a charity rather than their children.

If you're prepared to do a lot of research you could probably find out , the data is out there if not the exact result you are looking for.

buglawton

Yes I can see it is a difficult stat to compute.
Perhaps it needs to be looked at the other way around.
- What proportion of UK people die leaving nothing vs what proportion leave amounts in other ranges, e.g. £1,000-5,000, £5001-£20,000, etc?

These statistics, if they exist, could be converted into a distribution graph. Extra dimensions to the graph might be to how many recipients/what age ranges the recipients are in.

getmore4less

It gets quite hard because around 50% of those that die don't require a grant of administration so there is very little information on those estates many will be joint assets or no assets(kids/debts) and because the way you can get funds from bank accounts without a grant many estates can be in their £10k's.

The other 50%(around 1/2 million) only around 15k pay any tax. many of the others are below the thresholds or have exemptions due to spouse transfers.

the last set of grant stats is 2010/11
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/inheritance/commentary.pdf

this table has some interesting data on who has what for those estates that go to grant
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/inheritance/table12-5.pdf

insured

I think this would be a very difficult statistic to have any meaning.
Would it also include inheritances from spouses, which typically people would not regard as inheritances as such.
As well as this, there presumably must be large amounts which would not appear on the stats because no grant was taken out because of the size of the estate.
Are you wanting the statistics for some sort of project?

margaretclare wrote: »

I don't know what a 'Briton' may be.

Really? Which school did you go to?

margaretclare

insured wrote: »

Really? Which school did you go to?

One where we knew we were English schoolchildren.

We learned about the 'Ancient Britons' of course, and I don't think I'm one of them. They were the Iron Age pre-Roman people.