It’s not just the Murdochs or the Arnaults. As family-owned companies change hands, new data shows more American businesses are now being inherited than purchased—part of the broader Great Wealth Transfer marking a shift in how the next generation could shape the economy.
Bank of America‘s recent Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans found that in 2026, the share of businesses inherited among wealthy Americans is projected to reach 23% versus 11% that are purchased, a deviation from a previous pattern of more businesses being purchased than inherited. For example, in 2022, 28% of businesses were purchased compared to 5%, which were inherited, according to BofA data. Researchers surveyed 1,400 U.S. adults with at least $3 million in investable assets to look particularly at how high-net-worth individuals were saving and passing down their wealth.
Of course, this is all part of what’s become called the Great Wealth Transfer, the projected inheritance of between $36 trillion and $124 trillion in assets from Baby Boomers to younger generations over the next two decades. Wealthy individuals play an outsized role in this transference, as wealth accumulation is highly concentrated toward the top. The immense amount of wealth moving through generations has raised questions of how the economy will be shaped by the young and the rich. Jonathan Parker, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor of financial economics, said that how assets—in this case businesses—change hands can sometimes offer illumination of broader economic patterns.
What do more inherited businesses say about the economy?
To Parker, a greater share of businesses being inherited was a sign of even greater wealth concentration, a phenomenon that has gained attention amid growing concerns about affordability and the K-shaped economy, in which the rich keep accumulating wealth, even as the poor struggle to make ends meet. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the top 1% of U.S. households account for nearly one-third of the country’s wealth, equal to about $44 trillion, or as much as the bottom 90% of American households.
“We have a lot of business creation in the U.S.,” Parker told Fortune. “That’s generally a very good thing, and that does tend to generate top skewed wealth distribution for the owners, obviously, who have a lot of resources. An interesting question going forward is, what share of that wealth, when people reach the end of their lives, do they bequeath to their dependents?”
Parker noted that for decades, there has been an inverse pattern between wealth and the number of children one had, such that more affluent individuals had fewer kids. It’s a cycle that emerged during the Industrial Revolution, though economists have struggled to come to a definitive conclusion as to why this is. While there may also now be a breakdown of this trend in some parts of the world, in which wealthier people are beginning to have more children, Parker argues that wealth becomes less distributed in a family with one child versus six.
The increase in inherited businesses could also be part of a trend of companies staying private longer, as private firms are harder to cash out of. Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok, citing economist and “Mr. IPO” Jay Ritter, noted a rise in the median age at which companies go public since 2022, when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates. This trend has coincided with a boom in private capital, enabling larger-scale firms to raise billions through venture capital funding and private equity instead of public markets.
What questions do more inherited businesses raise?
While wealthier Americans inheriting businesses align with the economic trends of wealth concentration and longer maturity of private firms, Parker noted other factors could be informing this pattern.
“We currently have a very strange situation” regarding the taxation of inherited wealth, he said. Over the last 25 years, the U.S. has essentially overhauled its federal estate tax, most recently raising the exemption to $15 million per person under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. All the while, the U.S. has kept the step-up in basis on capital gains at death, a provision eliminating capital gains tax on an appreciation of an asset that took place during the lifetime of that asset’s original owner.
“It’s sort of like a tax benefit, a giveaway of taxes to people who pass it on to heirs, rather than the reverse,” Parker said.
The current tax system could further incentivize wealthy Americans to hold onto assets longer before passing them down, prolonging the Great Wealth Transfer to an extent, but maximizing gains for the next generation of heirs. While BofA did not give specific data on for how long original owners were holding onto their businesses and other assets, the report said a “notable portion” of business owners had no plans to transition out of their businesses, and the majority had plans to ultimately transfer or sell ownership to family heirs eventually.
“That might be partly why people are holding on to these businesses for longer, and then handing them down to the heirs,” Parker said. “And the heirs can then either make them public or sell them or keep them.”
