The wealth puzzle

The value of wealth ought to be equal to the savings of the “young”, since it is the young who buy financial and real estate assets from the “old”. But we find in OECD countries that the value of wealth increases significantly faster than GDP or national savings. How is this possible? There are only two possibilities: Either a large share of wealth is passed down by inheritance from the old to the young , so the young do not have to buy it from the old ; Or the young borrow to buy assets at very high prices and repay this debt when they are old thanks to the high value of the assets then sold to the subsequent young generation. The main explanation seems to be the concentration of wealth and inheritance.