The loss of experienced, high-productivity workers would weigh on growth and reduce tax revenues at a time when the Government is desperately trying to increase employment rates.
After all, HMRC data show the top 1pc of earners are responsible for a quarter of all income tax revenues, with the top 5pc of earners paying almost half the roughly £320bn a year in income tax paid to the Exchequer.
However, Arun Advani, the director of the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, says it isn’t clear that inheritances will lead more productive people to retire.
“Large inheritances will go to those who have higher incomes on average. But as a share of lifetime income, inheritances are relatively flat: for someone born in the 60s, inherited wealth will be worth about 10pc of all the income they earned.
“Combined with a relatively flat pension amount, actually, it is people who are on low to middle incomes who probably are most likely to retire when they get this.
“Those at the top often have jobs they at least partly get other value out of, and so some keep working anyway.”
Bee Boileau, at the IFS, says the phenomenon is more likely to affect richer people.
“We know voluntary retirement is much more common among higher-wealth older people, with lower-wealth older people much more likely to be out of work for other reasons, in particular long-term ill-health or disability.”