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Inter-vivos giving by older people in the United States: who received financial gifts from the childless?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

MICHAEL HURD
MICHAEL HURD*
Affiliation:
RAND Corporation and National Bureau for Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
*
Address for correspondence: Michael Hurd, Center for the Study of Aging, Rand Corporation, 1776 Main Street, PO Box 2138, Santa Monica, California 90407-2138, USA. E-mail: mhurd@rand.org
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Abstract

Inter-vivos financial transfers from older parents to their adult children are widespread in the United States. Childless people may simply make fewer transfers. On the other hand, because their giving is away from children, their decisions are more complex in that there are multiple potential targets of approximately equal attractiveness. Using data for 1996 to 2004 from the United States Health and Retirement Study, this article examines the differences between parents and childless older people in financial transfers to people other than their children. The results show that, overall, parents tend to give less than the childless to other people. However, some variation is found depending on the nature and target of the gift. Having children does not affect giving to charities but does reduce the prevalence of giving to parents, but not nearly as much as the reduction in giving to family and friends. It can therefore be concluded, first that there is little substitution between personal and impersonal transfers; secondly, that the sense of obligation to parents is not reduced by giving to charities or to children; and thirdly, that having children reduces the need to satisfy the desire for family and social ties by means of links to family and friends.

Keywords

inter-vivos transfersbequestslife-cyclealtruism
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 29 , Issue 8: Minimal Families: Childlessness and Intergenerational Transfers , November 2009 , pp. 1207 - 1225
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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