Brothers, sisters, and support to older parents: separate spheres across and within support types?

Christine Ho () and Kathleen McGarry ()
Additional contact information
Christine Ho: Singapore Management University
Kathleen McGarry: University of California, Los Angeles, and NBER

Journal of Population Economics, 2025, vol. 38, issue 1, No 25, 38 pages

Abstract: Abstract Adult children, especially sons, are often considered a linchpin of support to older parents in many patriarchal societies. We develop a model of transfers from adult children to older parents as existing in separate spheres depending on the child’s gender and type of transfer. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we find strong evidence of such differentiation. Coresidential support comes almost exclusively from sons as do large transfers, while daughters are more likely to make smaller transfers. Interestingly, crowding-out of financial transfers by siblings occurs primarily within gender: sons give less when they have more brothers but not when they have more sisters, and daughters give less when they have more sisters but not when they have more brothers. This pattern is present for both in-kind and cash transfers, suggesting that support from adult children may not be substitutable between genders, even for relatively fungible currencies.

Keywords: Old age support; Separate spheres; Gendered public goods; Son preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J13 J14 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-025-01059-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:38:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00148-025-01059-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-025-01059-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().