Intra-Familial Transfers, Son Preference, and Retirement Behavior in South Korea

Kyeongkuk Kim, Sang-Hyop Lee and Timothy Halliday
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Kyeongkuk Kim: Ministry of Economy and Finance, Republic of Korea

No 202013, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: We consider the nexus of intra-familial transfers, the sex composition of the sibship, and parental retirement behavior in Korea. To investigate this, we employ the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging and a research design that relies on plausibly exogenous variation in the sex composition of the sibship. We provide evidence that it costs more to raise sons than daughters in Korea. Thus, in the absence of sufficient transfers from adult sons to parents, parents will fund their earlier investments in their sons by increasing their labor supply. Consistent with this, we show that parents with more adult sons than daughters are more likely to delay their retirement. In particular, an elderly parent with all sons has a probability of being retired that is 7–10 percentage points lower than a comparable parent with all daughters. Elderly parents also work between 1.8 and 2.7 hours more per week when their sibship consists of all sons. These effects are the most pronounced when the first born is a son, as well as for poorer households.

Keywords: retirement; intra-familial transfers; gender; sex ratios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 J13 J16 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
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Journal Article: Intra-familial transfers, son preference, and retirement behavior in South Korea (2021)
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