Biological Basics and Intergenerational Transfers

描述（由申请人提供）：性别和生殖生物学是如何影响代际转移行为的？父母对孩子的支持是否取决于父母是父亲还是母亲，或者孩子是儿子还是女儿？尽管最近取得了进展，但大多数研究都是性别盲的。拟议的研究更多地关注来自生物学考虑的母亲、父亲、儿子和女儿的独特约束和利益。它侧重于生殖生物学的两个突出主题：首先是父权的不确定性。它会如何影响抚养孩子的动机？父亲身份的不确定性是否会在外祖母（其与孙辈的生物学关系始终是确定的）与父亲祖母之间产生迁移行为的差异？第二个主题是男性和女性后代的生殖和经济前景。一个营养充足的儿子原则上可以和几个配偶生孩子，“繁衍生息”。但女儿只能“继续前进并补充”。这些考虑是否会刺激父母的性别偏见投资？尽管生物学视角在经济学中是新颖的，但其基本方法已经得到了很好的确立。拟议的项目将使用印度尼西亚家庭生活调查（IFLS）和四个美国家庭调查来调查：(1)在考虑到代际转移的可观察决定因素的变化后，母系和父系祖父母的贡献差异有多大？(2)祖父母养育中无法解释的母系/父系差异如何随文化环境而变化，包括与关注父系不确定性相关的行为相关的习俗和传统？这些数据集中的每一个都包含与应用程序中处理的生物基础相关的唯一属性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): How do considerations of gender and reproductive biology figure into intergenerational transfer behavior? Does a parent's support for a child depend upon whether the parent is a father or mother, or whether the child is a son or daughter? Despite recent progress, the majority of studies are gender-blind. The proposed research gives more attention to the distinct constraints and interests of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters that emanate from biological considerations. It focuses on two prominent themes in reproductive biology: The first is paternity uncertainty. How might it affect incentives to provide for children? Might paternity uncertainty generate differences in the transfer behavior between, say, maternal grandmothers (whose biological relationship to grandchildren is always certain) versus paternal ones? The second theme is reproductive and economic prospects of male versus female offspring. A well provisioned son can in principle "go forth and multiply" by having children with several mates. But a daughter can only "go forth and add." Might these considerations spur sex-biased parental investments? Though a biological perspective is novel within economics, the underlying methods are well established. The proposed project will use the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and four U.S. household surveys to investigate: (1) How much of the difference in contributions of maternal versus paternal grandparents remains after accounting for variation in observable determinants of intergenerational transfers? (2) How does the unexplained maternal/paternal differential in grandparenting vary with cultural milieu, including practices and traditions that have been implicated in behavior connected with concerns about paternity uncertainty? Each of these data sets contains attributes uniquely pertinent to biological basics addressed in the application.