Does Fertility Matter for Middle Aged and Older Adults’ Risk Attitudes?

Given that risk attitudes influence many decisions, it is important to understand the factors that shape such attitudes in late adulthood, when individuals face important risky decisions. While research finds that parenthood tends to correlate with lower risk tolerance in western countries, there is a lacuna on whether such associations persist in late adulthood, and are applicable to the Asian context, where children are conventionally considered a linchpin of old age support. Data for middle aged and older individuals come from the nationwide Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,740). Multivariate statistical analyses are employed to estimate the associations between willingness to take risks (in the general, financial, and health domains) with parenthood status and the number of children. We control for potential confounders and employ a two-stage least squares approach to mitigate potential selection issues. Older mothers tend to be less risk tolerant than older childless women across the three risk domains. Conversely, mothers with more children tend to be more risk tolerant compared to mothers with fewer children. There is no evidence that older men’s risk attitudes vary with parenthood status and family size.