Brothers, sisters, and support to older parents: Separate spheres across and within support types?

• Main Authors: HO, Christine, MCGARRY, Kathleen
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: brothers; sisters; old age support; separate spheres; mental accounting; Economics; Family, Life Course, and Society
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2687; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3686/viewcontent/Old_Age_Support_Allocation.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Parents in many countries exhibit a strong preference for sons over daughters; a preference that is often observed regarding transfers to children. Here, we ask whether son preference also drives differences in behavior regarding transfers from sons and daughters. We use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to examine the patterns of giving to parents and find strong evidence of such differentiation. Coresidential support comes almost exclusively from sons as do large transfers, while daughters are more likely to make small transfers. Moreover, crowding-out of financial transfers by siblings occurs primarily within gender: sons give less when they have more brothers, and daughters give less when they have more sisters, a pattern that exists for both cash and in-kind transfers. These results provide strong evidence of separate spheres or “mental accounts” for upward family transfers and suggest that sons and daughters are still viewed quite differently.