A ‘Horizontal Wealth Transfer’ Is Coming in the US

It’s a harsh reality for aging Baby Boomers: Over the next 20 to 25 years, their nest eggs will pass to surviving heirs. In fact, a new UBS Global Wealth Report estimates the total amount changing hands in that span will be a staggering $84 trillion. And while that money will eventually pass down to younger generations, some of it will move laterally first—to a surviving spouse, usually a woman, per CNBC. UBS estimates that $9 trillion of the total will be shifted horizontally between spouses in what it calls, fittingly, the “Great Horizontal Wealth Transfer.”

“We’ll see spouses inheriting wealth, rather than it going straight down to [their] children,” says UBS chief economist Paul Donovan. In these cases, the children would typically wait about four years, the length of time women outlive men on average. The horizontal transfer could have “substantial implications” for the money in the meantime, notes Business Insider. For one thing, previous research suggests that women are more likely to make charitable donations than men. CNBC adds that the phenomenon has “the potential to reshape the wealth management, investing, and luxury spending landscape, which has largely been dominated by men.” (More wealth stories.)