Transference of Intergenerational Wealth

Introduction

Wealth is not only something individuals earn, but something accumulated (or withheld) across generations. For racialized and Indigenous communities, intergenerational wealth transfer has been repeatedly disrupted by policies designed to break the chain of ownership, land security, and long-term financial security. This post will build on those ideas by examining how land theft, legal barriers, and structural exclusion continue to shape wealth inquality even today.

Land as the Foundation of Wealth

Land is not simply property, it's a core mechanism through which families build and transmit wealth. In Indigenous communities across Canada, colonial policies such as the Métis scrip system were specifically crafted to undermine that transmission (Farrell et al., 2021). While scrip was framed as compensation, the structure of the system led to widespread fraud, coerced sales, and confusion about ownership. The result was a massive transfer of Indigenous land into settler hands, interrupting the ability of Métis families to pass assets or property to their descendants.

A similar pattern appears in African American communities in the U.S. During the 20th century, Black farmers lost nearly 90% of their farmland due to discriminatory legal structures that made it nearly impossible to secure a clear title (Reznickova, 2023). Without legal recognition of ownership, land became “dead capital,” which means it could not be used as collateral, improved with loans, or reliably passed down. This is a direct example of how legal institutions can hold generational wealth hostage.

Though these two histories differ, the common thread is clear: when land is taken or made insecure, wealth transfer collapses, producing multi-generational poverty that is wrongly blamed on individual “choices.”

Wealth Reproduction is a System, Not an Accident

Beyond specific cases of land dispossession, wealth itself behaves in patterned, predictable ways. According to multigenerational research, wealth is remarkably persistent across at least three generations (Pfeffer & Killewald, 2018). Even after controlling for parents’ finances, grandparents’ wealth uniquely predicts their grandchildren’s wealth outcomes. This means that inequalities created 80-100 years ago continue to shape who has economic stability today.

Crucially, this research shows that wealth transfer begins long before inheritance (Pfeffer & Killewald, 2018). Families with more wealth can:

• Fund postsecondary education

• Provide down payments

• Support early career risks

• Help with childcare

• Keep younger generations out of debt

These early-life supports compound over time. When racialized or Indigenous families are denied these opportunities because previous generations were stripped of assets, the inequality becomes self-perpetuating.

Discussion Question

How do you think Canada would look today if Indigenous and racialized communities had been able to accumulate and pass down wealth at the same rate as white settlers for the past 150 years?

References

Farrell, J., Kral, K., Edelman, A., Nasser, E., Brulle, R., Ashcraft, C., Eady, M., Hazleton, A., Mohanty, S., Sabherwal, A., & Bergstrand, K. (2021). Effects of land dispossession and forced migration on Indigenous peoples in North America. Science, 374 (6570). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe4943

Pfeffer, F. T., & Killewald, A. (2018). Generations of Advantage. Multigenerational Correlations in Family Wealth. Social forces; a scientific medium of social study and interpretation, 96(4), 1411–1442. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sox086

Reznickova, A. (2023). Lost inheritance: Black farmers face an uncertain future without heirs’ property reforms (Policy brief). Union of Concerned Scientists. https://doi.org/10.47923/2023.15127