Abstract We use the 1993 wave of the AHEAD data set to estimate a gametheoretic model of families' decisions concerning time spent caring for elderly individuals and financial transfers for home health care. The outcome is a Nash equilibrium where each family member jointly determines his or her consumption, transfers for formal care, and time allocationinformal care, market work, and leisure. We use the estimates to decompose the effects of child characteristics into wage effects, quality of care effects, and burden effects. We also simulate the effects of a broad range of policies of current interest.

Abstract This article examines the exchange motive in intergenerational monetary transfers, namely current inter vivos transfers and planned bequests. The focus is on the causal effect of child-provided help on transfers from parents to adult children. Cross-sectionally, small transfers and help are positively correlated, with the findings robust to inclusion of child-parent relationship controls and lagged help. In an analysis of first-differenced data, the effect is statistically significant at the 10 per cent level. The analysis of planned bequests reveals no effect of child-provided help, suggesting that inter vivos transfers are better suited to exchange.

La prise en charge des soins des personnes âgées est un phénomène complexe et un sujet de préoccupation politique urgent. En rassemblant des littératures sur les prises en charge des soins venant des domaines de la gerontologie sociale et de l’economie, nous rapportons les résultats d’un projet de méthodes mixtes explorant les réseaux de prise en charge des soins informels. A l’aide de données quantitatives provenant du « British Household Panel Survey » (sondage officiel sur des menages britanniques) ainsi que des entretiens qualitatifs avec des personnes âgées et des travailleurs sociaux informels, nous décrivons des réseaux de prise en charge des soins informels différents, et les facteurs et processus décisifs qui ont contribué à la formation des réseaux. Une approche basee sur des réseaux de prise en charge des soins permet une étude à la fois quantitative et qualitative, et peut être utilisée pour explorer plusieurs questions importantes. Care for older people is a complex phenomenon, and it is an area of pressing policy concern. Bringing together literature on care from social gerontology and economics, we report the findings of a mixed-methods project exploring networks of informal caring. Using quantitative data from the British Household Panel Survey together with qualitative interviews with older people and informal carers, we describe differences in formal care networks, and the factors and decision-making processes that have contributed to the formation of the networks. A network approach to care permits both quantitative and qualitative study, and the approach can be used to explore many important questions.

The working papers published in the Series constitute work in progress circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comments. Views expressed represent exclusively the authors ’ own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors. Ruhr Economic Papers #153

Kathleen McKinney, Jamie Strausz-Clark, and participants in the West Coast Poverty Center’s seminar series for helpful comments on the study. We also thank Neil Kilgren of the Puget Sound Regional Council for providing us a copy of the Council’s 2006 Household Activities Survey and the Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC) at the University of Washington for clerical support. Nicole Keenen provided helpful formatting and editing work. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Washington State

Die ZBW räumt Ihnen als Nutzerin/Nutzer das unentgeltliche, räumlich unbeschränkte und zeitlich auf die Dauer des Schutzrechts beschränkte einfache Recht ein, das ausgewählte Werk im Rahmen der unter

We analyze the decisions of adult children to provide informal care to their parents. In particular we are interested in identifying whether siblings ’ caregiving decisions are Pareto efficient. First, we develop and estimate a structural model to reveal the preferences of only children (with-out siblings) for providing care to parents, leisure, and consumption. Under the maintained assumption that – conditional on observed parental and child characteristics – children with a sibling have the same preference parameters (but different constraints) as only children, we can then verify whether observed allocations of siblings in two child families are efficient, without making assumptions about the nature of the interactions. We find that caregiving decisions are more likely to be inefficient when both siblings are female, have a low education level, and report frequent family conflicts. 2 1

Computation was carried out using facilities of the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which are supported by P30 Center Grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and from the National Institute on Aging. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors. The first and second authors contributed equally to this paper. Please direct correspondence to Megan

How do middle-aged children allocate time and money transfers to their older parents in Europe?1

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be