DETERMINANTS OF BEQUEST MOTIVE: A MICRO ANALYSIS

Abstract

Household’s savings are influenced by various motives. Despite extensive research on saving behavior, a large part of household saving motives still remain unexplained. A study of possible determinants of household saving motives and their influence is both practically and theoretically important. Saving motives are the reasons to save and are broadly classified in to Life-cycle, Precautionary and Bequest saving Motives. This article proposes to empirically investigate the effect of demographic, social and economic factors on the bequest motive at household level. Ordered probit analysis is used to find out association and influence of various factors on the bequest motive. The study considers six aspects of bequest motive for analysis. The study finds that age of the individuals, gender, education and wealth are the four main factors influencing the saving for the sub motives of bequest household saving motive followed by Family size. Locality, Dependency ratio, profession, income and employment status do not determine the saving for bequest motive. The study also finds out that there is more possibility of accidental bequest since no intentional savings are done by the households for bequest motive.