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The $124 Trillion Opportunity: How the Great Wealth Transfer Will Redefine Money, Values, and Power

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • 13 minutes ago
  • 17 min read
Two hands in a dark setting; one holds a small earth, the other offers a stack of banknotes with a Bitcoin symbol, illustrating global finance.
Image Source: AI Generated via Canva

The Great Wealth Transfer—an expected $124 trillion shift of assets to younger generations by 2048—is one of the most transformative economic transitions of our time. Crucially, an estimated two-thirds (nearly $100 trillion) of this wealth is expected to pass to women. This episode explores how this massive transfer will clash with the starkly different values and financial realities of Gen Z and Millennials, who are generally worse off than previous generations at the same age.


We examine Gen Z's financial priorities: they favor alternative assets like crypto, private equity, and direct investments over traditional stocks. Their investment decisions are heavily values-driven, with a company's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) record influencing 82% of young investors, compared to 35% for older investors.


This wealth shift is also expected to fundamentally reshape industries, accelerating growth in areas like FemTech and women's health research. Additionally, the episode uses the World Bank's Changing Wealth of Nations report to emphasize the vital role of natural capital and the lack of progress in gender parity in human capital.





The global economy is on the cusp of the single largest transfer of assets in history—the Great Wealth Transfer. An estimated $124 trillion is expected to pass from older generations to younger ones by 2048. This shift is not just a financial event; it's a profound cultural and economic reorientation, particularly because nearly two-thirds of this wealth—or about $100 trillion—is expected to be passed on to women, either as surviving spouses or through succeeding generations.


For educated professionals, especially women in mid-career, this transfer is a signal that investment, consumption, and even career priorities are about to change forever.


1. The Values Transfer: Purpose Over Tradition

The incoming generations, particularly Gen Z and Millennials (ages 21–43), are bringing a set of values that are fundamentally different from their predecessors, ensuring that a wealth transfer does not equal a values transfer.

  • Values-Driven Investing (ESG): For 82% of wealthy Millennial and Gen Z investors, a company’s environmental, social, and governmental (ESG) record is a critical factor in their investment decisions. This is a stark contrast to the 35% importance level given by investors aged 44 and older. About 90% of these younger generations want their money to actively influence companies’ environmental actions.

  • Alternate Assets: Traditional investing is out. Younger investors show a greater preference for crypto, digital assets, private equity, and direct investment in companies. They believe you "can't just invest in average stocks" and expect returns.

  • The Soft Saving Shift: The concept of "soft saving" has emerged among Gen Z, prioritizing present enjoyment over aggressive retirement funding. While they want to be responsible, they value enjoying their lives now, based on the financial storylines they observed with their parents.


2. The Rise of Female Economic Power

The concentration of wealth in the hands of women will fundamentally reshape entire industries and investment priorities.

  • Reshaping Research and Healthcare: The influx of wealth and philanthropic power among women is expected to accelerate investment in women's health research and services. Historically, only 5% of global R&D was allocated to women's health. This new wealth will drive funding into historically under-resourced areas like menopause and endometriosis research.

  • The FemTech Boom: The industry focused on women's health, wellness, and longevity—dubbed FemTech—is expected to grow to $100 billion by 2030.

  • New Design and Consumption: With women controlling more wealth, industries like housing (supporting single women or new communal living models ) and travel (catering to the solo female traveler market ) will need to tweak design and catering to women's specific needs.


3. Rethinking Wealth Beyond GDP

The Great Wealth Transfer highlights the inadequacy of relying on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the sole measure of national and global prosperity. True progress must include an accounting of natural and human capital.

  • Natural Capital Crisis: The World Bank's "Changing Wealth of Nations" program, which tracks wealth beyond GDP, shows a concerning trend: total wealth in land assets (forests, agricultural land) per capita decreased globally across all categories. More dramatically, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa have experienced a 40% decline in renewable natural capital wealth per capita since 1995 due to resource depletion.

  • The Gender Parity Slowdown: Progress toward greater gender parity remains minimal. Between 1995 and 2020, women's share of human capital only increased by 2%, accounting for just 37% of total human capital in 2020.

  • New Housing Priorities: For the generations receiving this transfer, housing will be critical, not just for shelter but as a necessary nest egg. They will drive burgeoning industries focused on making homes climate-efficient and fireproof, reflecting the existential threats of their time.


The Great Wealth Transfer is not just a redistribution of assets; it is a shift in power to a generation with fundamentally different values. This next generation will prioritize purposeful investment, female health and longevity, and the protection of natural capital, forcing institutions and industries to adapt or risk being left behind.


Selected Links:

Wealth Transfer, Financial Trends, and Generational Behavior
Gender, Generational Wealth, and Investment


Episode Transcript:

Sue: (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Signal Shift. It's Sue here, I've got Raakhee here as well. And we're in our month of the future of money and investing. And today we're diving into maybe one of the most transformative economic transitions of our lifetime, which is called the great wealth transfer. This is about the massive shift of assets that we have coming from older generations to younger ones.


It may be quiet, but it's going to be powerful. It's going to reshape money and a lot of industries. So according to Cerulli Associates, don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but $124 trillion is expected to pass to the younger generation through 2048. And it's already starting to happen. The Bank of America estimates that actually roughly two thirds of this or nearly a hundred trillion will be passed on to women either as surviving spouses or through succeeding generations. So I thought that was really interesting. But overall, this transfer has a ton of implications, not just for financial planning, but also for things like charitable giving, general consumption habits.


You know, there's some stark differences in just life experiences among generations. How is that going to play out? So, you know, for instance, this doesn't apply across the board, but generally speaking, we've seen that millennials are worse off financially than Gen X and boomers at the same age. And now there's data that actually Gen Z is worse off than millennials at the same age. So as the world becomes more chaotic or complex, we're in the age of AI, how are things going to change? Who can they trust?


What are they going to invest in? What are they going to spend on as they get older and they receive this transfer of assets? So with that as a backdrop, Raakhee curious, what signals did you find related to this topic?


Raakhee: (01:54)

That was a great intro. you summed up some of the big things coming up with this wealth transfer. And I think you're right. think, like you said, it might be quiet, but it's going to be really powerful. I was looking at the generational shift that you were sort of speaking about. And I was particularly curious because of Gen Z being really the generation that's so different that we're still learning about. And Gen Z is basically that group that was born between 1997 and 2012. The last batch of them are still in high school. you mentioned, the amount that's going to go to women, if we look at the subset then specifically of both Gen, well, actually Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, they get about 100-hundred-and-six trillion.


Some of the interesting things I've picked up the Bank of America's private banks, 2024 study of wealthy Americans, 72 % of millennial and Gen Z investors believe that you can't just invest in average stocks and expect anything from it. So this ties so beautifully into what we spoke about in the future of money, the future of investing, and just saying that traditional just doesn't work anymore. wealthy investors, so kids who are already investing, and I say kids, but it includes millennials as well, so 21 to 43, show a greater preference for crypto, for digital assets, private equity, direct investment in companies. We spoke about this, right?


And opportunities that are burgeoning for people to just invest where they want to. a lot of them want to use that money to found their own companies, to start their own brands. So completely different way of thinking about money than those who are 44 and above.


You're gonna see alternate investment and that's come through from everything we've been looking at across all our episodes. The second, and we know this about Gen Z as well, very much values driven. They're all about the environmental, social, governmental frameworks of companies and how are they doing and looking at those factors and parameters when they invest.


And again, this difference is so stark that those between 21 to 43, a company's ESG record it 82 % of that investing decision for them, and it that much of importance. Whereas for those 44 and older, if they have to rank the importance for them, it's like 35%. That's, you know, it's vastly different.


About 90 % of millennials in Gen Z want their money to be used to influence companies' environmental actions. Something else interesting, and these are just things I picked up as well, just from the reading I was doing, but the discussions we've actually had recently. I was even thinking about the Times invention, fertility insurance. So even things like health savings, which we may have all done differently.


This generation is going to have to save for different things in different ways. a lot of their medical savings might go towards something like fertility insurance and saving for that, saving for technologies that will give them longevity or saving to be able to afford going to this, you know, longevity club or wellness club. And that will be a big part of the insurance rather than how we traditionally used money for insurance and health. Another one, of course, the obvious one is that some of them are going to become homeowners or they're going to have the wealth to be homeowners and homes transferred to them. What are they going to do about that? They may want to be nomadic travelers.


Some may want to grab the opportunity and say, I'm going to have a house. So will it be smaller homes? Will they want to downsize? Where will they live? So I don't know what's going to happen to the real estate realm, but we can expect an impact here and where people live.


And something we've spoken about in so many episodes as well, but how to make your home climate efficient, how to make sure your home is fireproof. Those sorts of things are going to be much more important. And I think burgeoning industries, right? And they should be now already. mean, absolutely. But I think you can have a generation that's like, that's important. This is my only shot, right? This is the wealth I'm getting. This is the house I might, it's the only house I may ever have. Like, I don't know if this gets better for me. Some of them maybe, Sue, have to also say that that's kind of the nest egg as they go through transitions from job loss to something else to, you those are all realities. It's going to look a little different.


And then the last thing this concept of soft saving. I don't know if you've heard of it. I hadn't either. Yeah, apparently it's like a Gen Z thing where they soft save. but what that means is we're putting a little aside, but they want to they want to prioritize present enjoyment over aggressive retirement funding because of the storyline they've seen with their parents I want to be responsible, but I want to enjoy my life, which I think some of them haven't seen the folks do right throughout their lifetime. So that was yeah, there was some things coming out for Gen Z.


Sue: (06:44)

Yes there is this great wealth transfer but there does not seem to be a values transfer with it just in that the experiences are so different and divergent that yeah the values that this next generation with all this inherited wealth will be you know, implementing is going to be really different. So I thought that was really important to mention because a lot of the institutions that previous generations have trusted either will have to just change fundamentally or you're going to see new kind of institutions pop up that younger generations really trust. Like I was just thinking about whether it is the alternative investments or even just all of these different technologies and healthcare and functional health.


Like who do you go to to trust? in terms of an institution, right? There might be specific people, but you you always like go to your doctor, you go to your hospital, like things like that. But are there going to be other types of intermediaries in the future that will help take care of this? So yeah, just really interesting. then, yeah, your point about the nest egg, I think is important to mention. It's not something I saw in some of these other reports, especially with the older women is just, yeah, with the world becoming more chaotic and just confusing having something to rely on will be important and that may change your kind of investment thesis Yeah, I think the signal that I have is in a similar vein, just in that there is a whole contingency of people that will now have more wealth than they ever had before and that's women.


And of course, Bank of America issued a separate report just on women and wealth. And so for me, I was thinking, wow, two thirds potentially of all this wealth transfer is going to women in different generations. That's a big deal. And I think for me, the part of the report that was super interesting is, as you were mentioning, just the way this is fundamentally going to reshape industries. And we're going to see new things that we haven't seen before that should have been around for a long time.


Just an example, things that we've touched on before that now will have legs just because of the wealth and who controls it is just women's health research and healthcare services, right? So we talked like even in 2020, World Economic Forum, McKinsey said 5 % of $200 billion in global R &D goes to women's health. Think about the possibilities now with women's philanthropy, investing in ventures, private equity deals, right? That could go a long way in shaping how research programs are funded, what kind of health services are provided. I mean, $250 million for menopause research right now, $44 million for something like endometriosis. It's ridiculous. So I am just really excited to see what changes, and we're already seeing some of those changes today.


And in a related field, Fem Tech, right? That's what they're calling it. But it's related to women's health, wellness, longevity, and just issues particular to women. It's expected to grow to $100 billion just by 2030. And so that also is really, really exciting to think about what apps we will have available. It just made me wonder what other areas are now under consideration. So you mentioned housing. Just thinking about especially for women who choose to be single, right?


What is that going to do for housing when you, think in a previous episode, we talked about marrying your best friend, right? Just things like that. That may fundamentally shape what housing looks like. Travel, solo women are like a huge travel group and growing. So how's that going to change visibility and support? It's just really, really exciting stuff. Just thinking about how design will be tweaked for women and catering to women with this kind of new wealth. So yeah.


I'll just add that on to what you're already seeing with the younger generation.


Raakhee: (10:42)

It is such an exciting time in this sense, right? as you were speaking, I thought about the cross connection between the fact that you've got these Gen Z millennials and a big portion of them being women. But also I think, and I don't have stats or data on me right now, but younger women being equally or more educated, right? They are the ones who are kind of topping the classes or taking up more of the enrollment in schools now. So they're also going to, it's that shift of educational mass is going to be these young women now, right? And also moving up in their corporate jobs as well. So very different.


Sue: (11:17)

Yeah, very different. Yeah, what other signals have you found for this great wealth transfer?


Raakhee: (11:22)

I don't know if it's a signal, think somewhat to Gen Z, it's just putting out some ideas about how to think about wealth differently. Something that occurred to me was just, again, the changing wealth of nations. And I wanted to investigate that and understand how does that look, what happens in different countries. And part of the challenge with the idea of even wealth of nations is that we rely very heavily on GDP as the source of speaking about any country's wealth and progress and all those things, right? But the problem is that GDP only tracks real, just pure economic progress, not wealth, not what we would define as wealth. So to measure the sustainability of actual economic progress, you need something different. To measure what wealth will be in the future, you need something different.


One of the places doing one of the most important programs on this is the World Bank. So the World Bank has a program called the Changing Wealth of Nations, and they measure wealth across countries. And they've been doing this for the last two decades. And so again, what they look at is things like whether infrastructure is being built or degraded.


What investments are made in the people? What's happening with population sizes? Are they growing? Are they shrinking? How is that happening? What's happening with renewable and non-renewable actual assets in the country that nature provides, right? Again, are they sustainable? Are they growing forests? Are they depleting their stocks? What's happening with the land? know, topsoil and land is a real crisis in the world. There's going to be crisis of both water and farming, right? that there are issues across countries. taking into account all of that. And the human capital side, right? Are they learning? Are they gaining skills? Are they contributing to the economy? And are you getting labor income from those people? So yeah, you have these different forms of wealth or capital and they've of course got their own measurement systems. It's very technical. You can read the report. But even the UN Secretary General kind of is emphasizing the importance of looking beyond GDP.


The latest report was the 2024 report. Their database covers about 151 countries and they look at the period from 1995 onwards. So this report looked at 1995, they got to COVID 2020. So it's missing some interesting shifts that have obviously happened in the world since, right? And a lot has happened in the world since. So yeah, I'll just share a couple of things here. High income countries, as we would expect, made up like two thirds of total nominal wealth.


But upper middle income countries, And that's what, you know, developing nations in essence constituted nearly a quarter. The rest of the world, where half of the population lives, I know we've heard this before, but we have to keep hearing it, accounts for 7%. So some things as we've always known, remain kind of the same. And again, speaks to the poorest getting poor, a band of upper middle income being able to move up. But things staying the same there. What's really interesting is places like sub-Saharan Africa, where they would talk about real GDP per capita growing, right? Because you've got a lot of labor income coming in. And so real GDP per capita grew by 205%. with high volatility, of course, in this kind of region.


But on the other hand, the real wealth per capita in sub-Saharan Africa increased only by 20.7 percent because resources are being depleted. So sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa have experienced the largest decline in renewable natural capital wealth per capita since 1995, about 40%. And South Asia has also lost about a third. So when you look at the future, natural capital and where that puts us in the future, some really interesting insights and things to look about, which don't seem that way on paper when we look at countries right now.


Really interesting, renewable energy from hydro power has experienced a remarkable increase of about 23 % over the same 25-year period, pretty much everywhere, right? But leading, of course, in North America, Latin American, Caribbean, places like East Asia and Pacific, did really well, largely driven by China. As we would expect, non-renewable natural capital, like fossil fuels and metals, minerals has been a very volatile category. And the composition within this changing. So naturally, fossil fuels, coal, oil, that accounted for about 87 % before in 2000 is at a lower 53 % by 2020. As expected, we'd expect the world to be then moved towards renewable energy. And we see that in the numbers.


But what's interesting is that within the sector, minerals, however, mineral wealth is kind of increasing in these different regions really concerning, but at the global level, total wealth in land assets, right? So this is your forest, your agricultural land, Per capita decreased across all categories for everyone. So either way, this is problematic for us, right? Human capital actually looks good in a lot of regions because that's again about, we contributing to labor economy with the size of our population and that's still growing in many countries.


So there's a lot more to read, understand. This is just a summary report. There's so much deeper here.


But it just goes to show you got to understand the resource of a country. You got to understand the strategies and policies they use, how they've used them to understand what's the future going to look like for certain places. My takeaways again, protect the land, renewable energy, hydro power. Oh, my gosh. Women's progress and parity. gosh, I have to pull this number out. I didn't mention this under human capital, but very little progress towards greater gender parity. Women accounted for 37 % of human capital in 2020, right? So 37 % in 2020. That number was just 2 % higher from 1995. So between 1995 to 2020, 2%. So gender parity, as we've seen and pulled out so many times, is a real issue just generally across the world. And of course, it's unevenly balanced in certain countries. It's much worse than it might be here.


I think the question we all have to ask with these wealth transfers is if we don't take care of our natural capital, make smart decisions, what does the future hold?


Sue: (18:03)

Thanks, Raakhee. That was a real education just on how many things are intersecting at the moment. As you were talking about GDP, even thought about back to our first episode just on all the different kinds of economic models there needs to be. you're talking about renewables really made me think about the regenerative economy. We haven't talked too much about it in the past couple of episodes but.


Yes, this idea is GDP can't be the only thing that we're measuring because soon enough, as you were talking about, our resources are going to get so depleted. There has to be another answer. so, yeah, again, like how do you, can you measure productivity in a different way, like renewing some of the resources that we have? So super interesting. It also made me wonder how, especially some of the things you talked about Gen Z, how their investment patterns and consumption patterns are going to change at the macro level of what you're talking about.


Like I hope that there would be more of an acceleration on gender parity, just knowing how values based and self conscious, a lot of Gen Z, that they are compared to previous generations. So I'm really curious in the next 10, 20 years, how that will change. It said great wealth transfer is by 2048.


Well, thanks for sharing that, Raakhee. So this is kind of the end of our series on the future of money and investing.


I think just the realization that, yeah, it seems the ground seems to be shifting underneath our feet when it comes to a lot of things, but also here on where you're placing your money, what money will even look like in the future. So I think a couple lessons for me is just really trying to stay tuned to that and unfortunately, you you just can't rest on the assumptions of previous generations and what institutions have been providing to date. The world is just moving a little bit too fast for that.


So I think that is the question then who can you trust to help kind of guide you into the future and what you want to do. So hopefully more products will be coming out to that. Then yeah, I'm just super excited to see over the next 10 years how that's going to be shaping what companies can offer. How that makes our lives better, especially as women. So yeah, really excited to see that.


All right. Well, thanks, Raakhee. And thanks for all of you who are watching and listening. hope you learned something during this series around the future of money and investing. And as always, you know, we are not recommending investment into products. We're not financial experts. We're just kind of exploring the world and what is out there and what's existing. So you're aware and we're aware. So, yeah, if you're interested in future topics, have any questions or comments, go to our YouTube page. Leave us message there and


Thank you and we will see you next time. Take care, bye.

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