Thesis advisor: Donald Cox / This dissertation contains three essays. It provides analysis on issues concerning about family economics. The first essay investigates issues about intergenerational transfer in China. Does parental support in China respond to low income of the elderly? Intergenerational transfers from adult children to their parents are thought to contribute a significant portion of old-age support in China. With a fast growing elder population and an increasing old-age dependency ratio, it is important to understand these transfers. This study investigates the determining factors of intergenerational transfers in China. This line of research is still lacking due to the scarcity of detailed household data. Past studies on private transfers in China could not differentiate between intergenerational versus intragenerational transfers. Using pilot data from the newly released China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), I found that around half of the sampled households received transfers from adult children and the amount of transfer is as much as two-thirds of household income per capita. Data also showed that poorer households are more likely to receive transfers. Data suggested that people in the poor province (Gansu) have a higher degree of dependence on adult children, as the source of providing old-age support and living arrangement. Seeing how private transfers are large, widespread, and responsive to income, the benefits from instituting appropriate public policy would likely accrue in part to younger generations by lessening their burden of familial support. The second essay examines the effect of social father on the well-being of out-of-wedlock children. Social fathers, defined as stepfathers or unrelated cohabiting romantic partners of biological mothers, have become more widespread as a result of the increasing out-of-wedlock childbearing. With more young children living with social fathers, it is important to understand the effect of social fathers on the well-being of children. Previous research focused more on such effect on older children or adolescents. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), I find that children with social fathers scored around three points less in a cognitive ability test than children living only with biological mothers. I used the propensity score matching method to address the selection issue for which the child's mother self-selected into having a new partner. Social fathers will be more common because of the widespread of non-marital births. Any negative effect caused by the social fathers will affect a large portion of child population. The third essay evaluates the association between the timing of parenthood and the timing of retirement. Is late parenting associated with late retirement? The trend of parenthood timing is under drastic change. The birth rate for women aged 30-34 rose from 52.3 births per 1000 women in 1975 to 96.5 births per 1000 women in 2010 while the birth rate for women aged 20-24 went down from 113 births to 90 births per 1000 women during the same period. The children may still be very young when their parents enter their retirement age. In the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), 20% of respondents' children lived with them while nearly 30% of these children were below 18 years of age. Despite the potential importance of this issue, economists have not done much research on it. Using the HRS, this study found that parents who have their first child before or at age 30 retire earlier than parents who have their first child after age 30. This positive association holds for different sub-groups of the sample. With significant portion of people delaying their parenthood and a large group of people entering their retiring age, it is very important for policy makers and economists to understand how the timing of parenthood associates with the timing of retirement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Extension professionals are faced with the challenge of effectively communicating relevant information to an evolving audience with diverse interests. This study utilized mixed methodologies to highlight specific educational programming needs of nonindustrial private forest landowners (NIPFs) in Mississippi. Ten landowner focus groups were conducted during January 2012, followed one year later by the mailing of 3,000 survey questionnaires to Mississippi NIPFs owning 20 or more acres of uncultivated land. Findings indicated NIPFs are more likely to adopt new ideas if educational programming is tailored to their specific needs, indicating the need to group the audience by their interests. In particular, findings showed an increasing need for educational resources, particularly regarding succession management and estate planning. Eighty percent of respondents indicated passing land to heirs was an important or very important reason for land ownership. Results also emphasized the importance of employing new technology as a means for communicating more efficiently.

Keeping forestland intact has emerged as a critical policy objective at state and federal levels. This target has been supported by substantial public investment. The collective impact from the bequest decisions of millions of landowning individuals and families has the potential to affect the extent and functionality of future forests in the United States. Despite a growing body of research devoted to studying these transitions in forest ownership, much remains unknown about how family forest owners make decisions in this arena. The social and emotional dimensions of woodland succession planning have been particularly under-examined. This thesis explores the process of planning for the future use and ownership of woodlands through in-depth analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with family forest owners in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and Vermont. The first article investigates how family forest owners evaluate and integrate stories derived from their social networks when planning for the future of their woodlands. Analysis of the themes contained in stories framed as “cautionary tales” revealed common fears surrounding succession planning. The second article explores the complexity of emotional relationships with family forests showing how emotional geographies manifest in the succession planning process. Together, these studies deepen understanding of how family forest owners plan for the future of private woodlands and offer implications for Extension and outreach.

Keeping forestland intact has emerged as a critical policy objective at state and federal levels. This target has been supported by substantial public investment. The collective impact from the bequest decisions of millions of landowning individuals and families has the potential to affect the extent and functionality of future forests in the United States. Despite a growing body of research devoted to studying these transitions in forest ownership, much remains unknown about how family forest owners make decisions in this arena. The social and emotional dimensions of woodland succession planning have been particularly under-examined. This thesis explores the process of planning for the future use and ownership of woodlands through in-depth analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with family forest owners in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and Vermont. The first article investigates how family forest owners evaluate and integrate stories derived from their social networks when planning for the future of their woodlands. Analysis of the themes contained in stories framed as “cautionary tales” revealed common fears surrounding succession planning. The second article explores the complexity of emotional relationships with family forests showing how emotional geographies manifest in the succession planning process. Together, these studies deepen understanding of how family forest owners plan for the future of private woodlands and offer implications for Extension and outreach.

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Les répercussions de la hausse mondiale des prix du logement à partir des années 1980 sur l’économie ont attiré un intérêt croissant pour la recherche. Le logement représentant une part importante des dépenses des ménages ainsi que de la richesse totale, il est important de comprendre le rôle du logement dans l’inégalité des richesses. Cependant, en raison de la disponibilité des données, peu de choses ont été faites pour comprendre ce problème. La richesse des ménages s’accumulant à partir de deux sources principales : l’épargne et les transferts de capital, il est important de comprendre le lien qui existe entre ces sources et le marché du logement lorsque les prix de l’habitation changent. Ainsi, les deux premiers chapitres de cette thèse visent à mieux comprendre l’importance de la filière logement pour l’économie. Plus précisément, le premier chapitre attire l’attention sur la corrélation entre les prix du logement et la production. En introduisant différents chocs dans l’économie, nous pouvons analyser leurs effets sur les prix du logement et l’accumulation de capital, ainsi que sur le mécanisme de transmission de ces chocs. D’autre part, le deuxième chapitre porte sur la manière dont le transfert intergénérationnel rend l’inégalité persistante via le marché du logement. En considérant une économie avec deux actifs d’investissement différents : le logement et le capital, nous montrons qu’il existe un équilibre dans lequel le logement est plus rentable que le capital. En tant que famille riche, c’est-à-dire celle qui a hérité d’une richesse relativement plus grande, peut accéder au marché du logement alors que la famille pauvre ne le peut pas en raison de la contrainte d’emprunt, l’inégalité persiste à long terme. En outre, le patrimoine et les transferts entre ménages sont les deux canaux de transmission essentiels qui relient la richesse de manière différente. Bien que l’on pense que les transferts entre ménages contribuent au développement du capital humain et donc des revenus du travail, l’héritage joue un rôle décisif dans l’accumulation de capital et de richesse. Les données du compte de transfert national en France nous ont montré qu’au cours des dernières décennies, la composition des transferts privés a sensiblement évolué : d’une part plus dominante des transferts entre ménages à une part plus dominante en matière de succession. Ce changement entraînant deux effets négatifs, il est donc intéressant de comprendre pourquoi et comment cela se produit, ainsi que son lien avec l’inégalité de la richesse. Ces questions sont abordées dans le troisième chapitre de ma thèse. / Impacts of the global rise of housing price from 1980s on the economy has attracted a surging research interest. As housing represent a major share of household expenditure as well as total wealth, it’s important to understand the role of housing on wealth inequality. Yet, due to data availability, little has been done to understand this issue. As wealth of households is accumulated from two main sources: capital savings and transfers, it’s important to understand how these sources are linked to housing market when there’s a shift in housing prices. Thus, the first two chapters of this thesis aim to a better understanding on the importance of housing channel on the economy. More specifically, the first chapter draws attention on the co-movement between housing prices and production output. By introducing different shocks to the economy, we can analyse their impacts on housing prices and capital accumulation as well as the mechanism in which these shocks are transmitted. On the other hand, the second chapter focuses on how intergenerational transfer makes inequality persistent via the housing market. By considering an economy with two different investment assets: housing and capital, we show that that there exists an equilibrium in which housing is more profitable than capital. As the rich family, i.e. the one who inherited relatively higher wealth, can access the housing market while the poor one can’t due to the borrowing constraint, inequality maintains in the long run. Furthermore, bequest and intrahousehold transfer are the two essential transmission channels that link to wealth in different way. While intrahousehold transfer is believed to contribute to the development of individual’s human capital and hence labour incomes, inheritance plays a decisive role in one’s accumulation of capital and wealth. Data from the national transfer account in France showed us that over the last decades, there has been a notable change in a composition of private transfers: from a more dominant share of intrahousehold transfers to a more dominant inheritance one. As this shift triggers two adverse effects, it’s therefore interesting to understand why and how it happens as well as how it is related to wealth inequality. These questions are addressed in the third chapter of my thesis.