Financial resources, living arrangements and private transfers

This dissertation analyzes of the caregiving behavior of adult children towards elderly parents and their living arrangements.;In the first part, we investigate the role of children's characteristics, primarily wealth and wages, in determining coresidency outcomes using data collected as part of the Health and Retirement Study. We find that the effect of children's wealth and wages is highly non-linear: primarily found at the lower end of the distribution and inexistent elsewhere. We show that this is best explained by children being helped by parents rather than providing help themselves. Second, we show that omitting one of the children or parent's SES variables tends to overestimate the relationship between SES of the remaining member and coresidency outcomes. Together these two results highlight the value of considering rich information on characteristics of both parents and children when investigating the determinants of coresidency.;In the second part, we analyze new intergenerational transfer data that has recently become available in the Chinese Social Survey of Family Dynamics (CSSFD) and assess whether or not it is useful to measure family support. In particular, we analyze the relationship between income and transfers in urban and rural areas. We argue that a social security pension system could not be effective without paying attention to its crowding out effect on intergenerational private transfers.;In the third part of the dissertation, we analyze the determinants of financial and time transfers from adult children to their elderly parents in rural areas using the matched sample from the 2002 Chinese Social Survey of Family Dynamics (CSSFD) and the 2002 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). This is the first survey containing rich private transfers information in China. We find that wealthy children are more likely to give money transfers and give more; poor parents are more likely to receive money transfers and receive more. Interestingly, we also find that children and parental income are uncorrelated with time transfers. The evidence suggests that money transfers are more determined by children's financial status, while time transfers respond strongly to parental need. Results highlight the existence of strong private transfers from adult children to their elderly parents in rural China.