Borsch Supan et al. ( The remainder, which consists mostly of housing wealth, is left as bequests. They compare American practices with patterns observed among the elderly in Japan and report big differences between couple-households (living with or without children) and single households - while the former keep on saving, the latter dissave (see also Hayashi, 1989). Studies based on the SHARE dataset for European countries show that savings and dissavings rates hinge on socio-economic factors.