In the context of an economic crisis that has affected countries in Southern Europe especially and that has called into question the public pillar of the intergenerational contract, i.e. pensions, ...literature has shown an increasing interest in analyzing the other intergenerational pillar, which is largely based on family solidarity and which has been insufficiently explored for the Spanish case. Therefore, based on official data provided by the Time Use Survey (TUS) and the Household Budget Survey (HBS), an effort has been made to identify, through multivariate models, the individual factors that determined certain expressions of family solidarity and their participation and intensity of time and money transfers among family members in one of the most critical moments of this crisis in Spain (2009/2010). The results question the idea that the unemployed and the retired have been net recipients during the crisis, revealing that it is insufficient to consider only a single manifestation of solidarity, the financial one, when accounting for the wide range of support and transfers that circulate among family members.
We study whether caregiving and intergenerational transfer decisions are sensitive to changes in economic incentives following the inception of a new unconditional and universal system of allowances ...and supports, after the introduction of the 2006 Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for Dependent Persons Act (SAAD in Spanish), and the ensuing effects of its austerity cuts after 2012. We find that whilst the introduction of a caregiving allowance (of a maximum value of €530 in 2011) increased the supply of informal caregiving by 20-22 percentual points (pp), the inception of a companion system of publicly subsidised homecare supports did not modify the supply of care. Consistent with an exchange motive for intergenerational transfers, we estimate an average 17 pp (8.2-8.7pp) increase (decrease) in downstream (upstream) transfers among those receiving caregiving allowances. Our estimates resulting from the reduction in the allowances and supports after the austerity cuts in 2012 are consistent with our main estimates, and suggest stronguer effects among lower-income families.
Parents transfer a great deal to their adult children, and we have rich theoretical models providing a framework for these transfers. However, both the models and existing empirical work typically ...examine behavior in the cross section. To date, we know little about the dynamic aspects of family transfers. Here I examine transfers over a span of 17 years and find substantial changes in recipiency over time and a strong negative correlation between transfers and transitory income. I also find that events such as job loss and divorce are strong predictors of parental transfers and, although rare, are typically associated with larger transfers than income alone might predict. Finally, transfers are distributed unequally across siblings, and perhaps surprisingly, the distribution of transfers becomes even more unequal when examined over an extended period of time than in any single year. The evidence presented here thus suggests that dynamic analyses can provide insights into behavior that are impossible to obtain in a static context.
•There is substantial year to year variation in transfers from parents to children.•There is large variation in amounts received by siblings that grows over time.•Transfers are often made in response to events such as a divorce or job loss.
Personal mastery has been shown to be a mediator of the relationship between perceived social support and depressive symptoms. Less is known about its role in the context of received social support. ...While there is some evidence that received social support may improve one's sense of personal mastery, other studies highlight that received social support may induce dependence and lower one's sense of personal mastery. In addition, less is known about structural factors such as gender that may alter this relationship.
To examine gender differences in how personal mastery mediates the relationship between received social support and depressive symptoms.
Using data from a nationally representative study of community dwelling older adults in Singapore, we test the hypothesis that personal mastery is an inconsistent mediator of the received social support-depressive symptoms association using mediation analysis and that gender is associated with this inconsistent mediation.
We find support for our hypothesis of personal mastery as an inconsistent mediator, and observe both the direct and indirect effects of received social support on depressive symptoms to be stronger in females than in males.
Depressive symptoms for females may be more sensitive to received social support than males, which may be due to gendered pathways and expectations of support. This study highlights the need to further examine both the beneficial and detrimental effects of received social support on psychological health in tandem, considering the effect of mediating variables such as personal mastery to understand its nuanced pathways.
•A closer look at the association between received social support and depressive symptoms.•The second wave of a nationally representative study of Singaporean older adults was used.•Personal mastery mediated the effects of social support more for females than males.•Both the positive and negative effects of social support should be considered.
•We examine the effects of disbursing child transfers to mothers by default.•Mothers and fathers are equally entitled; we vary the default disbursement option.•“Gender targeting by default” largely ...affects the long run disbursement division.•The 100%-to-the-mother default redistributes money to separated low-income mothers.•The nudge does not seem to affect the division of childcare responsibilities.
We exploit a sharp birthday discontinuity in a large and universal Swedish cash transfer program, creating plausibly exogenous variation in the default disbursement option, while holding entitlements and other financial incentives constant. When the cash transfer is paid out to the mother by default, instead of a 50/50 default, it has a large effect (55 percentage points) on the probability that the transfer is deposited in the mother's bank account also in the long run. Surprisingly, we find that the default policy redistributes resources to separated low-income mothers. We find no indications that the 100%-to-the-mother default induces mothers to work less or to take more responsibility for the children.
As baby boomers enter retirement, an increasing portion of the population in Europe will rely on wealth as a source of financial security. We address two research questions: what is the association ...between family size, i.e. the number of children, and wealth for adults who are preparing for or have entered retirement and does the generosity of family transfers moderate that association? Data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) are used to estimate the relationship between family size and the total household net worth of men and women between ages 50–65, born 1939–1967 from 14 European countries. We use logistic and linear regression modelling to investigate the probability of zero or negative wealth and net worth percentile rank. We find that adults with four or more children are more likely to be in debt and have less wealth than childless adults. In contrast, adults with two and three children have more wealth. We provide evidence that the generosity of family transfers ameliorates the negative association between larger family sizes and wealth, but may exacerbate wealth inequality by benefiting two and three child families most.
This research investigates how the interplay between demographics, economics and welfare state transfers affects the impact of the ageing process on income redistribution, at both intra and ...intergenerational levels. We combine different EU comparable data sources with microsimulation techniques in order to measure how agents resort to the three available resource allocation devices over their lifecycle (asset market and public and private transfers), extending the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology at the micro level. Agents are heterogeneous in age, gender, education level and family type. Simulating population dynamics at the micro level allows us to capture not only the ageing process but also the educational transition and the change in family structures occurring in parallel. The resulting projection model allows us to simulate the lifetime net transfers received by individuals from the government and the family, and to compute the adjustment needed to keep the sustainability of the welfare system.
The analysis is applied to four European countries representing different welfare state regimes (Spain, Austria, Finland and the United Kingdom). We find differences in the role of private and public transfers in intra and intergenerational redistribution across countries, which can be linked to the various welfare state regimes. Apart from the expected differences observed by gender and by education level, there are significant differences in the interplay between private and public transfers related to parenthood. While parents privately transfer substantially more than childless people in all studied countries, the Austrian welfare state is the only one that compensates high and medium education groups for these differences through higher public transfers to parents. Such compensation is much weaker and more targeted towards the lower educated in the other countries.
•Simulations of income redistribution, at both intra and intergenerational levels.•Significant differences in the life cycle impact of welfare policies across Europe.•Parents privately transfer substantially more than childless people.•Public transfers are highly redistributive among the three educational groups.•Only the high educated are net payers of life time public transfers.
•Receiving DI increases the probability of receiving in-kind assistance from children.•Assistance from children substitutes for support formerly provided by a spouse.•Families share DI benefits, ...allowing children to reduce work and increase care.•Receipt of DI allows the family to re-optimize how they support one another.
While the main insurance sources for individuals with disability are understood, less is known about how family support interacts with federal disability benefits. Using the Health and Retirement Study matched to administrative records, I examine how disability benefits affect family support by comparing accepted and rejected disability applicants before and after benefit receipt. Receipt of disability insurance increases the probability of receiving any assistance from children by 18 percent and more than doubles the amount of in-kind assistance. Disability insurance also increases the probability that children are paid for their help and reduces children's labor supply. These findings are largest for low-income beneficiaries and those who recently lost a spouse, suggesting that child assistance complements income provided by disability insurance, and substitutes for other family assistance. Receipt of disability benefits allows the family to re-optimize how they provide support, and disability insurance is shared within the family in complementary ways.
Redistributive so‐called social pension schemes have seen a remarkable surge in developing countries. These schemes often target the rural elderly and correlate with urbanization rates, urban ...rural‐wage differentials, and family norms. We use this stylized evidence to motivate a political economy model for a Beveridgean pension system with trade‐offs between four groups: the (poorer) rural old and young, and the (richer) urban old and young. We show under which conditions governments will install a pension system and increase its generosity as the share of the urban population rises, productivity differentials between urban and rural workers widen, or the social norm erodes. Our conclusion is that the role of the rural–urban divide in shaping redistribution merits more scholarly attention, as the gap between cities and the countryside widens in many developing countries.
To capture the simultaneity of changes in different types of family transfers and describe the pattern of rebalancing of intergenerational family support in response to variation in public support, ...it is important to study bidirectional flows of resources between family generations. This study uses data on 13 European countries to estimate the net value of transfers between parents and adult children and to determine the relationship of the net value of family transfers with public intergenerational transfers. Individual-level data come from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, and are supplemented with the country-level information from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations, and national statistical offices. Multilevel models are estimated to account for the nested structure of data. The results suggest that the needs of parents and children and their ability to provide support are important determinants of the flow of net transfers between parents and children. Public intergenerational transfers to the generation of older parents and/or their adult children are associated with a secondary redistribution of support at the family level from persons belonging to the generation that benefits relatively more from public transfers to those belonging to the other generation.
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