Raising Children to Work Hard: Altruism, Work Norms and Social Insurance

Assar Lindbeck and Sten Nyberg

No 557, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or shame associated with failure to support themselves. While social insurance pools risk across families, we show that it also creates a free-rider problem among parents in terms of norm formation. We also examine the formation of norms requiring children to support their parents financially in old age.

Keywords: Work norms; Social insurance; Altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 D64 H31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2001-05-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Raising Children to Work Hard: Altruism, Work Norms, and Social Insurance (2006)
Working Paper: Raising Children to Work Hard: Altruism, Work Norms and Social Insurance (2001)
Working Paper: RAISING CHILDREN TO WORK HARD: ALTRUISM, WORK NORMS AND SOCIAL INSURANCE (2001)
Working Paper: Raising Children to Work Hard: Altruism, Work Norms and Social Insurance (2001)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0557

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