The genesis for the exploration of motives underlying inter vivos transfers, of which intergenerational transfers are a special case, lay in the seminal papers of Barro (1974) and Becker (1974). The issue has survived the test of time, and has once again emerged as an important part of the economists’ research agenda. There are primarily two reasons behind this surge of interest. First, an important implication of Barro’s analysis is that any increase in social security benefits accruing to a member of the “dynastic” household would crowd out, perhaps even dollar for dollar, private intrahousehold transfers to that individual. Since the efficacy of publicly provided social security benefits, including nonmonetary transfers like health care, is the focus of a major public policy debate, a better understanding of the motives underlying intergenerational transfers has become imperative.
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Bhaumik, S.K. (2007). Demographic Events and the Timing of Monetary Transfers: Some Evidence from Germany. In: Gauthier, A.H., Chu, C.Y.C., Tuljapurkar, S. (eds) Allocating Public and Private Resources across Generations. International Studies In Population, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4481-6_4
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