Family Transfer Behavior in the HRS and AHEAD

描述(由申请人提供)：这项研究调查成年子女是否会在他或她的时间成本增加时，用金钱转移给年迈的父母来代替时间转移。该项目的具体目标是：(1)描述成年子女向年迈的父母转移金钱和时间，并找出它们如何随婚姻状况、兄弟姐妹的数量和性别、遗产的可能性而变化；(2)开发和估计子女的时间机会成本对其将时间或金钱转移给年迈父母的倾向和转移金额的影响的模型；(3)计算对时间和财务转移需求的补偿和无偿价格弹性，并研究这些弹性如何随父母和子女的特征而变化。理解这种行为很重要，原因有几个。在美国，人口老龄化引起了人们对不断增长的老年人口福利的担忧。如果家庭成员的转移具有重要的经济意义，对人口福祉的衡量应考虑到这些转移。此外，年迈的父母可以接受经济或时间转移，类型可能取决于接受转移的父母和成年捐赠者子女的特征。最后，私人转移动机对政府再分配政策的有效性有潜在影响。我们建议通过估计儿童工资对转移的影响来实现项目的目标，利用来自健康和退休研究(HAS)和高龄老年人中的资产和健康动态(AHEAD)的丰富数据。我们有条不紊地利用数据和经验技术来控制因忽略变量和未观察到的异质性而产生的偏差。这项研究将对子女工资率对向老年父母提供的经济和时间转移的影响提供重要的基线估计，并为今后关于转移供求弹性的工作奠定基础，并对转移动机的测试产生影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This study investigates whether an adult child substitutes financial transfers to an elderly parent for time transfers as the cost of his or her time increases. The specific aims of the project are: (1) to describe transfers of money and time by an adult child to elderly parents and to find how they vary with marital status and the number and sex of siblings, likelihood of a bequest; (2) to develop and estimate models of the effect of a child's opportunity cost of time on his or her propensity to transfer time or money to an elderly parent and on the amount transferred; (3) to calculate the compensated and uncompensated price elasticity of demand for time and financial transfers and to study how those vary by characteristics of parents and children. Understanding this behavior is important for several reasons. In the United States, population aging has generated concern for the welfare of a growing elderly population. If transfers from family members are economically important, measurement of the well being of the population should take into account these transfers. Moreover, an elderly parent may receive either financial or time transfers and the type may depend upon the characteristics of the recipient parent and the adult, donor child. Finally, private transfer motives have potential consequences for the effectiveness of government redistribution policies. We propose to accomplish the aims of the project by estimating the effect of a child's wage on transfers, exploiting the richness of the data from the Health and Retirement Study (HAS) and the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD). We methodically utilize both data and empirical techniques to control for biases resulting from omitted variables and unobserved heterogeneity. This research will provide important baseline estimates of the effect of a child's wage rate on financial and time transfers provided to elderly parents, and a foundation for future work on the elasticity of supply and demand for transfers with implications for tests of transfer motives.