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Parental marital disruption and intergenerational transfers: An analysis of lone elderly parents and their children

  • Income Within and Across Families
  • Published:
Demography

Abstract

Although one of the most marked demographic trends observed over the twentieth century is the increased rate of divorce, relatively little research has explored the effects of these changing marital patterns in the context of an aging society. Using a sample of lone elderly parents and their adult children, we analyze the direct and indirect effects of marital disruption on four important dimensions of intergenerational transfers: coresidence, financial assistance, adult children’s provision of informal care, and parental purchase of paid care. Our findings suggest that divorce has deleterious effects on intergenerational transfers, particularly for elderly fathers. Remarriage further reduces exchange. Our results reveal that parents engage in lower levels of transfers with stepchildren relative to biological children. Moreover, intergenerational transfers are sensitive to characteristics of biological children but not to those of stepchildren. Taken together, these results suggest that exchange at the end of the life course continues to be adversely affected by marital disruption

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hopkins Center on the Demography of Aging, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Marburg B-186, 21287-2080, Baltimore, MD

    Liliana E. Pezzin

  2. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, USA

    Barbara Steinberg Schone

Authors
  1. Liliana E. Pezzin
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  2. Barbara Steinberg Schone
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liliana E. Pezzin.

Additional information

We thank Thomas Burch, Robin Weinick, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments. We are also grateful to Beny Wu for assistance with the analysis tile. The views expressed in the paper are ours. No official endorsement by either the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research or the Department of Health and Human Services is intended or should be inferred.

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Pezzin, L.E., Schone, B.S. Parental marital disruption and intergenerational transfers: An analysis of lone elderly parents and their children. Demography 36, 287–297 (1999). https://doi.org/10.2307/2648053

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