New Zealanders are not leaving money to their children the way they used to - and many are not able to. Not only are times tough, but we're living longer and older people need the money for themselves.
As part of a study to "better understand and quantify New Zealander attitudes and actions around intergenerational wealth", Public Trust commissioned a quantitative survey of more than 1000 Kiwis.
Kiwis once used to pay 4.5 times an average annual salary for a house, for example, and now it can be 10 times that
Clinical psychologist Nigel Latta presented the Public Trust findings in Wellington, and spoke with Sunday Morning about what it all means.
The research showed that people want to leave legacies, but often see that as sharing values and connections, instead of just money and property.
"People do kind of want to leave both," Latta said.
"Some people are more focused on the emotional legacy that they leave, the stuff that's important to all of us - it's the values, the sense that our kids have had a good upbringing, all that sort of stuff.
"But the other stuff is important, protecting the other stuff that we pass on, particularly in a world where the landscape of assets has changed from what it was, and we live longer..."
Ninety-eight of Kiwis want to leave a legacy, according to the survey.
"I think most people are thinking about legacy because it makes it easier to think about the fact that we stop.
"For most of us, you do think about how do we look after our kids and how do we kind of set them up for their life."
In the survey, 71 percent claimed an emotional benefit from receiving a legacy, which supersedes the 51 percent who received a financial benefit from a legacy.
Latta noted that people are generally left with a bit less of a financial legacy than they once had.
"How things have changed - and it's a fairly significant change, is that it used to be that our lifespan was shorter, houses were more affordable, and so the physical part of a legacy was much clearer - because you get married, you have kids, you buy a house, you die, you pass that on.
"Not so much any more. So for a lot of young people it's actually really difficult to find their way into property, so they need help from parents and extended family to get there in the first place.
"And less and less of them are going to have those sorts of things to leave for other people.
"And at the heart of all of this is this thing that none of this is stuff we like to think about or talk about because it's ultimately depressing.
"Actually the idea of a legacy in what we're passing on, that's like a conversation that is begun often by thinking about the physical things that people leave behind, but it's about those much bigger things that are behind that.
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