I will give nothing, snaps Scrooge, and he ushers them from his premises.

Last week the Australian Productivity Commission revealed how much the poor receive in Australia from inheritances and gifts. Nothing is the answer.

Currently, about $120 billion a year is transferred as inheritances and gifts in Australia. The average inheritance is $125,000, the average gift is $8000.

Yet averages smooth over irregularities.

In reality, the richer you are, the bigger the inheritance, and the bigger the gift you can expect from the bank of mum and dad. In contrast, for the poor, inheritances and gifts are in suburbs too far away.

By 2050, says the commission, the transfer of wealth by inheritances and gifts will rise to $224 billion.

The source of the growth is two-fold.

One is the rising value of real estate. The Newcastle Herald reported recently the median price for a detached dwelling in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie urban area has reached $844,000, a climb of $200,000 in just one year.

The other source of rising wealth is superannuation savings. Currently Australians hold a massive $3.4 trillion in superannuation savings. Deloitte predicts this will rise to about $10 trillion by 2035.

Now think of who is more likely to fully own a house and have a tidy sum in their superannuation savings, and you won't be surprised to learn that the financial assets of retirees are growing at a faster rate than those of any other age group.

This is the pool of wealth that flows to the next generation as inheritances and gifts - although, it should be emphasised, flowing most strongly within better-off families.

A bonus for recipients is these flows are tax free. Australia ended gift and inheritance taxes at the end of the 1970s following the abolition of death duties in Queensland by its notorious premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

The other Australian states quickly followed suit to stem an outward flow of senior citizens and their money, typically buying up Gold Coast apartments to secure a Queensland address before they died.

Subsequently, calls for reinstatement of death duties have been rare. Australians seem to accept the argument that a person's wealth, acquired by fair means and taxed honestly, shouldn't be re-taxed when gifted, before or other death.

According to the Tax Foundation, an agency committed to tax fairness and transparency, only 15 of the 34 countries in the OECD levy zero taxes on property passed to lineal heirs. The average inheritance tax among OECD nations is 15 per cent, with rates exceeding 40 per cent in the US, UK, France, South Korea and Japan.

There are many reasons that the children of the founders of Amazon, Sainsbury, Louis Vuitton, Samsung and Uniqlo should pay tax on their substantial inheritances. But in the case of modest wealth transfers to spouses and children, the trend throughout the world is towards tax-free flows.

But where does this leave the idea of a fair go for all? The second of Charles Dicken's three spirits has a view about the distribution of wealth:

"To any kindly given. To a poor one most." [said the spirit]

"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.

"Because it needs it most."

As wealth builds in our nation's housing stock and superannuation funds, the heirs to this wealth will obviously have a significant head start over those whose parents have not too much in the pantry.

The policy response is a simple one. Governments need to over-provide for those unlucky in the wealth stakes, especially those in their earlier years.

Education and health spending, especially, should be heavily biased in favour of those needing a hand up.

The rationale is obvious, every Australian should have the opportunity to earn and build their own wealth, to overcome the absence of the benefits of inheritances and gifts.

Sadly, though, all the evidence shows poorer kids actually get fewer education and health resources.

We need to do more.

As Tiny Tim urges us, a cup of Bob Cratchit's hot brew to hand, "God bless us, every one!".

Happy Christmas.

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