This paper analyzes how altruistically motivated physical and human bequests affect long-run interest elasticities of savings and the consequences of tax reform for economic growth. Our approach is to extend the empirically calibrated, life cycle simulation model to include both adult human capital and altruistic bequests. The most surprising general conclusion of the paper is, despite a much higher compensated interest elasticity of savings with altruistic bequests, full tax reform experiments, including uncompensated tax timing effects, generate about the same change in physical savings in models with altruism as in their pure life cycle counterparts.
