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Time? money? both? the allocation of resources to older Parents

  • Marital Patterns, Living Arrangements, and Intergenerational Relations
  • Published:
Demography

Abstract

We provide estimates of a reduced-form model of the allocation of household time and money resources. We consider four demands for these resources: time spent working, time spent providing care for noncoresident elderly parents, time spent performing house-work, and monetary transfers to noncoresident elderly parents. We focus on the effects of wage rates and parental characteristics on the allocation decisions of adult children and their households concerning these four demands. We find that households with individuals earning high wages rely relatively more on cash transfers and relatively less on time transfers than do lower-wage households. We also find evidence consistent with an unmeasured tendency of some families to provide multiple sources of support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, Connecticut, USA

    Douglas A. Wolf

  2. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA

    Kenneth A. Couch

  3. Center for Policy Research, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, 13244, Syracuse, NY

    Mary C. Daly

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  1. Kenneth A. Couch
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  2. Mary C. Daly
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  3. Douglas A. Wolf
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Correspondence to Douglas A. Wolf.

Additional information

This research was supported in part by NIA Postdoctoral Fellow-ships received by Kenneth Couch (Grant No. T32 AG00238) and Mary Daly (Grant No. F32 AG05642). Useful comments have been received from Daniel Hill, George Jakubson, Jan Ondrich, Peter Barth, Stephen Miller, the editor, and three anonymous referees.

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Couch, K.A., Daly, M.C. & Wolf, D.A. Time? money? both? the allocation of resources to older Parents. Demography 36, 219–232 (1999). https://doi.org/10.2307/2648110

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