IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vic/vicddp/1903.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Earning Risks, Parental Schooling Investment, and Old-Age Income Support From Children

Author

Abstract

Old-age income support is an important motive for parents to invest in schooling of their children in developing countries. At the time parents choose schooling investment for their children, both parental future income and return from schooling are uncertain. This paper analyzes effects of parental income risk and human capital investment risk on parental schooling investment using alternative models (altruism and educational loan model) of determination of old-age income support in a model with intergenerational transfers. It finds that effects of these risks on schooling investment depend on whether old-age income support is state-contingent. When income support is state-contingent, increasing parental income risk (human capital investment risk) has a positive (negative) effect on schooling investment. However, when income support is not state-contingent, effects of these two types of risks may get reversed. Numerical analysis using Indonesian data suggests that risks have significant negative effect on schooling investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Alok Kumar, 2019. "Earning Risks, Parental Schooling Investment, and Old-Age Income Support From Children," Department Discussion Papers 1903, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    • Handle: RePEc:vic:vicddp:1903
    Note: ISSN 1914-2838 JEL Classifications: O15, D60, I20, I25, J22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/economics/_assets/docs/discussion/ddp1903.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pouliot, William, 2006. "Introducing uncertainty into Baland and Robinson's model of child labour," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 264-272, February.
    2. Michele Boldrin & Ana Montes, 2005. "The Intergenerational State Education and Pensions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 651-664.
    3. Katja Maria Kaufmann, 2014. "Understanding the income gradient in college attendance in Mexico: The role of heterogeneity in expected returns," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5(3), pages 583-630, November.
    4. Raut, Lakshmi K. & Tran, Lien H., 2005. "Parental human capital investment and old-age transfers from children: Is it a loan contract or reciprocity for Indonesian families?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 389-414, August.
    5. Kodde, David A, 1986. "Uncertainty and the Demand for Education," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(3), pages 460-467, August.
    6. Diego Restuccia & Carlos Urrutia, 2004. "Intergenerational Persistence of Earnings: The Role of Early and College Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1354-1378, December.
    7. Kazianga, Harounan, 2012. "Income Risk and Household Schooling Decisions in Burkina Faso," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1647-1662.
    8. Andrew D. Foster & Esther Gehrke, 2020. "Start What You Finish! Ex ante risk and schooling investments in the presence of dynamic complementarities," Working Papers 2020-19, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    9. Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2007. "Education choice under uncertainty: Implications for public policy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 894-912, December.
    10. Jean-Marie Baland & James A. Robinson, 2000. "Is Child Labor Inefficient?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(4), pages 663-679, August.
    11. Flug, Karnit & Spilimbergo, Antonio & Wachtenheim, Erik, 1998. "Investment in education: do economic volatility and credit constraints matter?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 465-481, April.
    12. Singh, Aarti, 2010. "Human capital risk in life-cycle economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 729-738, September.
    13. Checchi, Daniele & Garcia-Penalosa, Cecilia, 2004. "Risk and the distribution of human capital," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 53-61, January.
    14. Lee Lillard & Robert Willis, 1997. "Motives for interqenerational transfers: Evidence from Malaysia," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 34(1), pages 115-134, February.
    15. A. Sandmo, 1970. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Saving Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 37(3), pages 353-360.
    16. Paroush, Jacob, 1976. "The risk effect and investment in human capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 339-347, December.
    17. Cox, Donald & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2008. "Extended Family and Kinship Networks: Economic Insights and Evolutionary Directions," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 58, pages 3711-3784, Elsevier.
    18. Cox, Donald, 1987. "Motives for Private Income Transfers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 508-546, June.
    19. Williams, Joseph T, 1979. "Uncertainty and the Accumulation of Human Capital over the Life Cycle," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 521-548, October.
    20. Appelbaum, Elie & Katz, Eliakim, 1991. "The Demand for Children in the Absence of Capital and Risk Markets: A Portfolio Approach," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 292-304, April.
    21. Andrew D. Foster & Esther Gehrke, 2017. "Start What You Finish! Ex Ante Risk and Schooling Investments in the Presence of Dynamic Complementarities," NBER Working Papers 24041, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Rangazas, Peter, 1991. "Human capital investment in wealth-constrained families with two-sided altruism," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 137-141, February.
    23. Park, Cheolsung, 2003. "Interhousehold Transfers between Relatives in Indonesia: Determinants and Motives," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 929-944, July.
    24. Peet, Evan D. & Fink, Günther & Fawzi, Wafaie, 2015. "Returns to education in developing countries: Evidence from the living standards and measurement study surveys," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 69-90.
    25. Raut, L. K., 1990. "Capital accumulation, income distribution and endogenous fertility in an overlapping generations general equilibrium model," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 123-150, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Fernanda Mazzotta & Lavinia Parisi, 2020. "Money and time: what would you give back to me? Reciprocity between children and their elderly parents in Europe," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(3), pages 941-969, October.
    2. Alok Kumar, 2019. "Old-Age Income Support, Human Capital Investment, and Efficiency: Rotten-Kid Theorem Meets Samaritan's Dilemma," Department Discussion Papers 1902, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    3. Kochar, Anjini, 2014. "Intergenerational co-residence and schooling," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 4(C), pages 8-23.
    4. Chaitali Sinha, 2014. "Human Capital and Public Policy," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 3(1), pages 79-125, June.
    5. Jonathan Colmer, 2021. "Rainfall Variability, Child Labor, and Human Capital Accumulation in Rural Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(3), pages 858-877, May.
    6. Thakurata, Indrajit & D'Souza, Errol, 2018. "Child labour and human capital in developing countries - A multi-period stochastic model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 67-81.
    7. Estevan, Fernanda & Baland, Jean-Marie, 2007. "Mortality risks, education and child labor," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 118-137, September.
    8. Carol Ann Rogers & Kenneth A. Swinnerton, 2004. "Does Child Labor Decrease When Parental Incomes Rise?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 939-968, August.
    9. Cheolsung Park, 2014. "Why do children transfer to their parents? Evidence from South Korea," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 461-485, September.
    10. Lakshmi K Raut & Lien H Tran, 1998. "Motives for Investment in Human Capital of Children: Evidence from Indonesian Family Life Survey Data," Working Papers 199801, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    11. David Dreyer Lassen & Helene Bie Lilleør, 2008. "Informal Institutions and Intergenerational Contracts: Evidence from Schooling and Remittances in Rural Tanzania," CAM Working Papers 2008-03, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics.
    12. Annika Lindskog, 2018. "Diversification of Human Capital Investments in Rural Ethiopia," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(4), pages 676-692, September.
    13. Matthieu Delpierre & Arnaud Dupuy & Michel Tenikue & Bertrand Verheyden, 2017. "The education motive for migrant remittances - Theory and evidence from India," DEM Discussion Paper Series 17-13, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    14. François-Charles Wolff, 2000. "Les transferts versés aux enfants et aux parents : altruisme ou échange intertemporel?," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 142(1), pages 67-91.
    15. Diego Daruich, 2018. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Early Childhood Development Policies," Working Papers 2018-010, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    16. John Robst & Kathleen Cuson-Graham, 1999. "The effect of uncertain educational requirements on education and wages," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 53-63.
    17. Yonas Alem & Jonathan Colmer, 2022. "Blame it on the rain: Rainfall variability, consumption smoothing, and subjective well‐being in rural Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(3), pages 905-920, May.
    18. Lindskog, Annika, 2011. "Does a Diversification Motive Influence Children’s School Entry in the Ethiopian Highlands?," Working Papers in Economics 494, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    19. Raymond Boadi Frempong & David Stadelmann, 2021. "Risk preference and child labor: Econometric evidence," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 878-894, May.
    20. Christine Ho, 2019. "Child’s gender, parental monetary investments and care of elderly parents in China," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 741-774, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Schooling; Parental Income Risk; Human Capital Investment Risk; Old-Age Income Support; Risk-Sharing;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:vic:vicddp:1903. 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: Kali Moon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/devicca.html .

    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.