IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dem/wpaper/wp-2001-008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intergenerational transfers: the ignored role of time

Author

Listed:
  • Sumon K. Bhaumik

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

Abstract

The literature on inter vivos and intergenerational transfers has largely focussed on the possible determinants of such transfers. Specifically, much of the empirical work has examined whether transfers are driven by altruistic relationship between “dynastic” households. However, the empirical literature has consistently overlooked the possibility that transfers may be driven by specific events in the recipients’ lives like marriage, childbirth and illness. Further, it has not addressed the possibility that within a reasonably long time frame – say, one year – transfers may influence household income as much as household income influences the probability and magnitude of transfers. This paper addresses these lacunae in the existing literature. Using GSOEP data from the 1996 and 1997 surveys, it shows that demographic and other events determine transfers to a significant extent, and also that overlooking the possible endogeneity of income may lead to bias in the econometric estimations. (AUTHOR)

Suggested Citation

  • Sumon K. Bhaumik, 2001. "Intergenerational transfers: the ignored role of time," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2001-008, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2001-008
    DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2001-008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/Working/wp-2001-008.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2001-008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    3. Lee, Ronald & Mason, Andrew & Miller, Timothy, 2000. "From Transfers to Individual Responsibility: Implications for Savings and Capital Accumulation in Taiwan and the United States," Arbetsrapport 2000:3, Institute for Futures Studies.
    4. Donald Cox, 1990. "Intergenerational Transfers and Liquidity Constraints," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 187-217.
    5. Cox, Donald C & Jimenez, Emmanuel, 1992. "Social Security and Private Transfers in Developing Countries: The Case of Peru," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 6(1), pages 155-169, January.
    6. Donald Cox & Emmanuel Jiminez, 1993. "Private Transfers And The Effectiveness Of Public Income Redistribution In The Philippines," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 236, Boston College Department of Economics.
    7. Kathleen McGarry, 2000. "Testing Parental Altruism: Implications of a Dynamic Model," NBER Working Papers 7593, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Bernheim, B Douglas & Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "The Strategic Bequest Motive," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 151-182, July.
    9. Cox, Donald, 1987. "Motives for Private Income Transfers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 508-546, June.
    10. Altonji, Joseph G & Hayashi, Fumio & Kotlikoff, Laurence J, 1992. "Is the Extended Family Altruistically Linked? Direct Tests Using Micro Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1177-1198, December.
    11. Donald Cox & Oded Stark, 1993. "Intergenerational Transfers And Demonstration Effect," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 244, Boston College Department of Economics.
    12. McGarry, Kathleen, 1999. "Inter vivos transfers and intended bequests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 321-351, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Reil-Held, Anette, 2004. "Crowding out or crowding in? Public and private transfers in Germany," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 04-68, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    2. Wolff, Francois-Charles & Laferrere, Anne, 2006. "Microeconomic models of family transfers," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 889-969, Elsevier.
    3. Schwarze, Johannes, 2004. "Living Conditions of Children and Parental Well-Being – Evidence from German Data on Life Satisfaction," IZA Discussion Papers 1200, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Reil-Held, Anette, 2005. "Crowding out or crowding in? Public and private transfers in Germany," Papers 04-68, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    5. Fousseynou Bah, 2011. "A Simultaneous Determination of the Inter Vivos Transfer and the Unemployment Duration: the Malian case," Working Papers halshs-00630262, HAL.
    6. Mordechai E. Schwarz, 2006. "Intergenerational Transfers: An Integrative Approach," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 8(1), pages 61-93, January.
    7. Anette Reil-Held, 2006. "Crowding out or crowding in? Public and private transfers in Germany [Substituts ou compléments? Transferts publics et privés en Allemagne]," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 263-280, September.
    8. Anette Reil Held, 2005. "Crowding out or crowding in?," MEA discussion paper series 05072, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefan Hochguertel & Henry Ohlsson, 2009. "Compensatory inter vivos gifts," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 993-1023.
    2. repec:dgr:uvatin:20070074 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Stefan Hochguertel & Henry Ohlsson, 2009. "Compensatory inter vivos gifts," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 993-1023.
    4. Audrey Light & Kathleen McGarry, 2004. "Why Parents Play Favorites: Explanations for Unequal Bequests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1669-1681, December.
    5. Kristopher Gerardi & Yuping Tsai, 2014. "The Effect of Social Entitlement Programmes on Private Transfers: New Evidence of Crowding Out," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(324), pages 721-746, October.
    6. Marta Melguizo Garde, 2007. "La motivación de las transmisiones lucrativas entre generaciones de una familia: modelos teóricos y evidencia empírica," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 181(2), pages 81-118, June.
    7. Cox, Donald & Eser, Zekeriya & Jimenez, Emmanuel, 1998. "Motives for private transfers over the life cycle: An analytical framework and evidence for Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 57-80, February.
    8. Jensen, Robert T., 2004. "Do private transfers 'displace' the benefits of public transfers? Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1-2), pages 89-112, January.
    9. Wolff, Francois-Charles & Laferrere, Anne, 2006. "Microeconomic models of family transfers," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 889-969, Elsevier.
    10. Ana Fernandes, 2011. "Altruism, labor supply and redistributive neutrality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1443-1469, October.
    11. Arrondel, Luc & Masson, Andre, 2006. "Altruism, exchange or indirect reciprocity: what do the data on family transfers show?," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 971-1053, Elsevier.
    12. Elin Halvorsen & Thor O. Thoresen, 2011. "Parents' Desire to Make Equal Inter Vivos Transfers," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 57(1), pages 121-155, March.
    13. Anette Reil-Held, 2006. "Crowding out or crowding in? Public and private transfers in Germany [Substituts ou compléments? Transferts publics et privés en Allemagne]," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 263-280, September.
    14. Edwin S. Wong, 2013. "Gender preference and transfers from parents to children: an inter-regional comparison," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 61-80, January.
    15. Laitner, John & Ohlsson, Henry, 2001. "Bequest motives: a comparison of Sweden and the United States," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 205-236, January.
    16. Ernesto Villanueva, 2001. "Parental altruism under imperfect information: Theory and evidence," Economics Working Papers 566, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 2002.
    17. Altonji, Joseph G & Hayashi, Fumio & Kotlikoff, Laurence J, 1997. "Parental Altruism and Inter Vivos Transfers: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1121-1166, December.
    18. Oscar Erixson & Henry Ohlsson, 2019. "Estate division: equal sharing, exchange motives, and Cinderella effects," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(4), pages 1437-1480, October.
    19. Akın, Ş. Nuray & Leukhina, Oksana, 2015. "Risk-sharing within families: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 270-284.
    20. Rob Alessie & Viola Angelini & Giacomo Pasini, 2014. "Is It True Love? Altruism Versus Exchange in Time and Money Transfers," De Economist, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 193-213, June.
    21. McGarry, Kathleen, 1999. "Inter vivos transfers and intended bequests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 321-351, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2001-008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Wilhelm (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.