This study estimates the intergenerational wealth elasticity using original Japanese survey data and assesses factors explaining the intergenerational wealth elasticity, such as income, educational level, bequests and preferences. The age‐adjusted elasticity of child wealth with respect to parental wealth ranges from 0.266 to 0.367, and transition matrices indicate that the intergenerational transmission of wealth persists more strongly in the tails of the distributions. The correlation between parent and child wealth mainly stems from income, education and bequests, which jointly constitute 63.9% of the wealth elasticity.