Baby boomers are set to pass trillions of dollars on to their heirs in the next two decades, but the huge transfer of riches will mostly benefit Gen X and millennial heirs who are already wealthy.

A new analysis from Visa Business and Economic Insights finds that boomers, born between 1946 to 1964, will pass on $36 trillion in wealth to their younger heirs over the next 20 years.

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Nearly three-quarters of households receiving an inheritance will be in the top echelon of wealth in the country when they receive the money, Visa estimates. Gen Xers and millennials were born between 1965 and 1996.

Often called the Great Wealth Transfer, the inheritances are expected to be the largest passage of generational wealth in history, given the massive size of the baby boomer population and their wealth.

Baby boomers are sitting on about $93 trillion worth of assets, according to Visa's analysis. Only about 8.6 percent of that, or roughly $8 trillion, is expected to be spent into the economy, after it is inherited.

"Eight trillion dollars is nothing to sneeze at," Visa chief economist Wayne Best said. But that spending number has been whittled down quite a bit from the starting wealth.

Visa calculated that about $36 trillion would be passed from boomers to their heirs, after subtracting liabilities such as mortgages, as well as retirement spending and taxes. That works out to about $515,000 per inheriting household, but the inheritances will be uneven.

The richest boomers have the most to give away. Visa found that those in the 90th to the 99th percentiles of boomers held some $44 trillion in wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent of boomer households hold just $16 trillion in wealth.

Since most inheritances are coming from wealthy boomers, their heirs are more likely to be wealthy as well. Lower-wealth boomers will need to use more of their savings to pay for housing, health care and other needs, while wealthier households can save more to pass on.

The bulk of that money will flow to people who are worth far more than the average. And that means much of it will be saved or invested, rather than spent.

"Wealthier Americans are going to be putting that money into the stock market or real estate," said Jeremy Ney, a professor at Columbia University's business school and writer of the American Inequality newsletter. "It doesn't buy groceries or cars, it just changes your accountant's week."

It could also widen gaps between lower-wealth and higher-wealth Americans, Ney said, which have already been accelerating.

The $8 trillion in spending is still expected to boost the economy. Visa estimates it will bump annual consumer spending growth over the next 20 years from 2 percent to 2.1 percent. Much of that money will be spent on housing or new cars, as well as on travel and retail.

One reason that the transferred wealth will flow to the already wealthy might be because people are living longer, and therefore passing their money down to heirs who are already in their 50s or 60s, noted Jonathan Parker, a professor of financial economics and co-director of the MIT Sloan Consumer Finance Initiative. Those heirs have had more time to accumulate wealth than they would have if they had inherited in their 20s or 30s.

"There are tax incentive reasons to wait until you pass away to pass along those bequests," he said.

Still, some people in older generations have already started passing along their wealth, wanting to see its effects while they're alive. Visa found that more boomers are soaking up the benefits of their wealth, including by taking their grandchildren on vacation without their parents and by helping heirs with down payments on homes.

Visa's analysis to get to the $36 trillion removed the wealth held by the top 1 percent richest boomers, because their money is likely to go to charitable foundations and other private pursuits and doesn't represent typical spending.

"They don't really spend like the rest of us," Best said.

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People over 70 have steadily increased their grip on wealth

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