Dynasties in the making: Family wealth and inheritance for the first-generation ultra-wealthy and their wealth managers

Abstract

The inheritance practices of the ultra-wealthy play a key role in reproducing socio-economic inequalities across generations. Given this role, we need a better understanding of the individuals and families who own, accumulate and pass on substantial amounts of wealth. This article asks two questions: first, how do parents with profound ownership or control over capital reconcile cultivating dynastic wealth with beliefs in meritocratic achievement? And, second, how do wealth managers justify their commercial value to first generation wealthy clients? The answer to both of these questions involves what I call a pedagogy of inherited wealth. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with first-generation ultra-wealthy parents and their wealth managers, it documents how wealthy parents and wealth managers construct risky futures around inheritance, and their strategies to manage those risks through the control of access to the family’s wealth. In doing so, it explores how they produce two roles, termed here the ‘good inheritor’ and the ‘good client’. Through examining various strategies to manage family wealth and inheritance, the article reveals the legitimating and enabling pedagogy surrounding this process and the paradox at the heart of this pedagogy – which promotes both the value of work among the next generation of inheritors and the preservation of dynastic wealth that will preclude their dependence on income-generating work.