Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 54, Issue 3 S145-S153, Copyright © 1999 by The Gerontological Society of America
Financial assistance from middle-aged couples to parents and children: racial-ethnic differences
R Wong, C Capoferro and BJ Soldo
Department of Demography, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., USA. [email protected]
OBJECTIVES: To examine racial-ethnic differences in the allocation of
financial transfers to parents, children, and others by middle-aged
couples. METHODS: Multinomial specification of alternative recipients of
financial transfers, using data from the 1992 Health and Retirement Survey.
RESULTS: Transfer patterns are sensitive to parental health and wealth, to
children being young or in school, as well as to the donors' health and
wealth. Controlling for these and other factors, including family size and
structure, Blacks and Whites are the most likely, and Hispanics the least
likely, to financially help their parents compared to assisting offspring.
Black couples are the most likely to sacrifice their own consumption to
assist parents financially. DISCUSSION: Future research on transfers should
attempt to capture unmeasured noneconomic sources of variation proxied by
the race-ethnicity indicator.
