This paper uses an overlapping generation model with uncertainty and endogenous fertility to study households¡¦ educational and investment choices. Individuals are assumed to be selfish and the intra-family deals are ruled by a self-enforcing ¡¥family constitution¡¦. Within this framework, parents finance their children¡¦s education inasmuch as they receive a return (a share of the increased earnings accruing to the children) and degree of risk aversion. And we show that the effect of social security on fertility and saving is analyzed both in the absence and in the presence of a perfect capital market. The impact on family's decision of the ability of the bargaining power is one of the focal points that this text is discussed, too. We also show that under this arrangement, individuals purchase less education than socially optimal. This yields a rationale for public action, either via public provision or via subsidization. We analyses both policies and find that they have different implications for households¡¦ fertility decisions. In particular, subsidization should be preferred if we wish to keep the rate of population growth as high as possible.

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Thesis advisor: Donald Cox / <bold>Chapter 1 - Intergenerational Transfer Inflows to Adult Children of Divorce <bold> Do adult children of divorce receive less money from their parents than children of intact unions? Are they less likely to receive parental help for buying a house, starting a business or weathering a financial crisis? Though there is evidence that an individual divorced parent gives less to his child than he would give if he were married to his child's other parent, no study has examined the transfers given by both divorced parents. I approach the question of transfers to adult children of divorce from a fresh angle by asking not, "How much did the parent give?" but instead, "How much did the child get?" I also examine the correlation between parents' remarriage and transfers received. Using data from the 1988 wave of the PSID, I find that parental divorce and remarriage are uncorrelated with the incidence of a transfer. Within the select group of children who receive a transfer, however, divorce is correlated with an increased transfer amount, while a father's remarriage is correlated with a decreased amount. <bold> Chapter 2 - The Correlation Between Subjective Parental Longevity and Intergenerational Transfers <bold> Are parental financial transfers to adult children correlated with subjective parental longevity? Despite rapid and continuing increases in life expectancy, no previous study has looked at transfers in relation to parents' opinions of how long they will live. This paper uses the subjective survival probability data included in the Health and Retirement Study to examine this potential correlation for a select group of unmarried older parents. For mothers only, I consistently find modest positive correlations between subjective longevity and anticipated future inter vivos transfers and bequests. For fathers, I find a non-linear relationship between subjective longevity and anticipated future inter vivos transfers. I discuss the potential reasons for these descriptive results and some further questions that arise from them. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

<p>This dissertation investigates the economic behavior of families in developing settings. Utilizing uniquely rich, longitudinal survey data from Indonesia, it demonstrates the complexity of market environments facing rural households, as well as the importance of extended family networks in determining the health and well-being of young children. These essays serve as an illustration of advances in development economics that are possible when fundamental models are revisited and examined with new longitudinal data. The results of these exercises are important not only for updating economic models of behavior, but for what they reveal about the complexities of decision making, and for the effective design and evaluation of development policy around the world.</p> / Dissertation

China is entering a new historical era that has as its demographic hallmark an ageing population. The fact that China is ageing before it becomes a modernised, wealthy country, presents serious challenges, one of the most direct and important of which relates to support for older members of society. This thesis concerns the way in which different factors affect intergenerational transfers from adult children to their old parents, with particular focus on living arrangements and parental income. The core question this thesis aims to address is: If public transfers increase, would this crowd out private transfers? The results of the estimated association between living arrangements and intergenerational transfers are also used to improve the robustness of the test of crowding-out effect. This study is based on empirical analyses of two waves of nationally representative datasets, covering adult individuals aged 60 and over from 20 provinces in urban and rural China. Living arrangements are vital to intergenerational transfers and welfare in old age, especially in China where the family-based support mechanism by which the young cared for the old was traditionally through coresidence. The descriptive statistics show that though coresidence is still the predominant living arrangement in rural areas, older Chinese people are increasingly less likely to co-reside with children. Such changes in living arrangements, however, do not leave older people isolated over time. Investigation of the determinants of older people’s coresidence decisions shows that older people with more financial or instrumental needs are more likely to live with children. Analysis of the determinants of parents’ living distance from children finds that in urban areas, old parents with higher pensions are more likely to live far away from children, although insignificant effects are found for rural samples. Finally, this study finds weak evidence that parents living far from children receive more intergenerational transfers. Overall, it has been found that family support, including intergenerational monetary transfers, is still prevalent in China; particularly in rural areas. Although a pattern of declining intergenerational transfers began to emerge during the period between 2000 and 2006, the family unit, and traditional family support, appear likely to remain an essential pillar of security in old age. Through the use of a variety of quantitative methodologies this thesis is able to provide robust estimates of how the increase in public programmes is influencing private transfers in China. Analysis of the factors that determine the incidence of receipt of transfers from children suggests that intergenerational transfers in China tend to target old parents that are in greater financial need. Moreover, the analysis of determinants of the size of transfer suggests that although altruism and exchange motives co-exist, the exchange motive dominates inter-generational transfers in urban China. This study does not find statistically significant estimates of transfer derivatives for older people in rural areas. The emerging pattern of support for older people indicates the pursuit of a new balance between formal and informal support. This thesis argues that a gradual increase in public transfers will not crowd out private transfers, and, in cities, may actually strengthen private transfers.

Introduction: A general guideline was introduced on October first 2010 regarding a mortgage cap, limiting the degree of leverage of housing as collateral. Through the new guidelines the marked conditions concerning consumers’ choice of mortgage has changed. The consumers are limited in the sense that they can’t only use mortgage when purchasing a house. In this context there is a higher burden on the consumers in different aspects. In this study we intend to investigate how the consumers’ conditions affect choice of financing option when buying a home. Purpose: The study aims to highlight how consumers situation affect the choice of financing option. Furthermore, the study intends to describe the consumer’s choice of financing. That is how the consumer approaches the purchase with the mortgage cap of 85 per cent. Method: For the study, we have used a quantitative research method. The starting point has been a deductive study, where we from theory collect empirical data. In the collection of empirical data we used a convenience sample. Theory: The study’s frame of reference includes a description of the financing options that consumers can use. Further, how the decision-making process appears in the choice of financing a house purchase as well as how socio-demographic factors; age, income and family affect the process and choice of financing. Conclusion: The study shows that age and income are the two socio-demographic factorsthat have the greatest impact on consumer choice of option in the decision-makingprocess. Further, data from the study shows that mortgage and own savings are the mostrecurring funding option that consumers use. In the use of private loans, we see thatconsumers’ families have a great influence, since the majority have received private loansfrom their parents. Similar relationship can be seen in the usage of guarantor. Forunsecured debt, we see that the use is concentrated among younger consumers.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de vérifier si les baby-boomers sont à l’origine d’une rupture de l’équité intergénérationnelle en France. Elle repose sur une application de la méthode des Comptes de Transferts Nationaux, ce qui permet d’obtenir une mesure par âge de la consommation, des ressources individuelles, de l’épargne et des transferts publics et privés entre 1979 et 2011. Des projections sont également réalisées à l’horizon de l’année 2060 grâce au modèle MELETE concernant les transferts publics reçus et le revenu disponible. Les résultats, qui sont établis au regard des principaux critères de justice intergénérationnelle, ne présentent pas de rupture manifeste et généralisée de l’équité entre générations, même si la société française se caractérise par certaines iniquités concernant la répartition des revenus d’actifs et la répartition des pensions de retraite entre générations. Par ailleurs, cette thèse apporte des résultats qui sont utiles à la compréhension de la solidarité familiale en France. Depuis trente ans, l’augmentation du poids économique des donations et des héritages coïncide avec une diminution du poids des aides en sein des ménages et une stabilité du poids des aides entre ménages. Il en résulte que les transferts privés entre ménages sont de moins en moins adaptés aux besoins des bénéficiaires, ce qui est corroboré par une analyse micro-économétrique en panel qui montre que les évènements vécus par les donateurs peuvent déclencher le versement de donations, contrairement aux aides entre ménages qui dépendent exclusivement des évènements vécus par les donataires. / The purpose of this dissertation is to asses if baby-boomers are responsible of intergenerational inequities in France. To answer this research question, the dissertation applies the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology to the case of France, for the time period covering 1979-2011, therefore capturing national accounts aggregates such as consumption, individual resources, savings and transfers by age. Projections are conducted up to 2060 for public transfers inflows and for disposable income using the computable general equilibrium model “MELETE”, and the results are drawn from the main criteria of intergenerational justice. The results of this dissertation show that there is no obvious and widespread disruption of fairness between generations in the country. However, France is still characterized by intergenerational inequities seen through the allocation of asset income and publics pensions. The NTA methodology also provides useful results about private transfers in France. Since 1979, the role of wealth transfers increased over time, whereas the role of private transfers within households (intra-household transfers) decreased over this period and the role of regular, occasional and in-kind transfers between household (inter-household transfers) remained stable. It follows that private transfers are less and less responsive to the needs of transfer recipients. In fact, a micro econometric analysis using panel data shows that the life events experienced by transfer givers can trigger the payment of inter vivos wealth transfers, which is not the case for inter-household transfers that depend exclusively on the life events experienced by the recipients.

In this dissertation, I develop theoretical models and an empirical study of the role of social interactions, the evolution of social norms, and their impact on individual behavior. Although my models are consistent with individual utility maximization, they generally emphasize social factors that channel individual decisions and/or shape individuals' preferences. I apply this approach to three different issues: labor supply, fertility decisions, and intergenerational transfers, generating predictions that are more consistent with observed empirical patterns of behavior than standard neoclassical approaches that assume independent preferences, perfect information, and efficient markets. In the first essay, I explain the long-run evolution of working hours during the 20th century in developed countries: the substantial decline for the first three quarters of the 20th century and the deceleration or even reversal of the fall in working hours in the last quarter. I develop a model of the determination of working hours and how this process is affected by both the conflict between employers and employees and the employees' desire to emulate the consumption standards of the rich reference group. The model also explores the effects of direct and indirect policies to limit hours advocated by political representations of workers such as trade unions or leftist parties. In the second essay, I study the coevolution of gender norms and fertility regimes. Since the 1990s, a new pattern of positive correlation between fertility rates and female labor force participation emerged in developed countries. This recent trend seems inconsistent with conventional economic approaches that explain fertility decline as a result of the increasing opportunity costs of childrearing, predicting a negative correlation between fertility and women's labor force participation. To address this puzzle, I develop a model of the evolution of gender norms and fertility in various economic environments influenced by the level of women's wages. Randomly matched spouses make choices related to fertility - labor supply and the division of household labor - based on their preferences shaped by gender norms. In the model, norm updating is influenced by both within-family payoffs and conformism payoffs from social interactions among the same sex. The model shows how changes in economic environments and the degree of conformism toward norms can alter fertility outcomes. The results suggest that the asymmetric evolution of gender norms between men and women could contribute to very low fertility, explaining the positive correlation between fertility and women's labor force participation. Finally, I estimate the effect of exogenously introduced public pensions for the elderly on the amount of private transfers they receive. There has been a long debate whether public transfers crowd out private transfers. Previous empirical studies on this issue suffer from the endogeneity of income that contaminates estimates. I use an exogenously introduced public transfer, the Basic Old Age Pension in Korea, to test the crowding out hypothesis. A considerable proportion of the elderly population, especially women living without a spouse, do not experience the crowding out effect and moreover, among those who do, the size of the effect is relatively small. The results support the redistribution effect of the Basic Old Age Pension targeting the poor elderly in Korea.

Un consensus s’est formé autour de l’idée que la solidarité familiale ferait contrepoids à l’augmentation des inégalités et que le pays constituerait - à un âge donné - le principal facteur de différenciation dans sa mise en œuvre. Au contraire, les résultats exposés montrent comment l’intervention familiale contribue à stratifier, dans chaque contexte national, les conditions d’entrée dans la vie adulte. A l’aide de l’enquête SHARE (Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement), nous étudions le déploiement dans treize pays européens des trois principaux types de transfert intergénérationnel réalisés par les parents en direction de leurs descendants adultes : les dons d’argent, le maintien des jeunes au foyer parental, et les services rendus. Dans tous les pays, ces pratiques constituent des vecteurs de transmission des inégalités d’une génération à l’autre : les dons d’argent dépendent fortement des ressources des pourvoyeurs - en particulier de leur patrimoine -, la cohabitation aboutit à des inégalités significatives du point de vue des ressources perçues, et les services, quoiqu’apparemment guidés par les besoins des jeunes adultes, jouent un rôle significatif dans la reproduction de la division genrée du travail domestique. En définitive, cette thèse contribue à réorienter le regard sur les déterminants et les impacts sociaux de la solidarité familiale, ainsi que sur l’articulation en Europe entre les trois « piliers » du Welfare (public, marchand et familial). Elle incite à réviser la vision usuelle des conséquences en terme de stratification sociale de l’inégale intervention familiale dans les premières années de la vie adulte. / Family solidarity is usually regarded as a counterweight to the growth of inequalities, and - for a given age - the country is considered a major differentiation factor in its implementation process. On the contrary, our results show how family intervention stratifies, in each national context, the transition to adulthood and contributes to the transmission of social inequalities from one generation to another. Building on the SHARE survey project, we compare the development of the three main kinds of intergenerational transfers from parents to their offspring in thirteen European countries : monetary gifts, intergenerational coresidency and time transfers. In the whole set of countries, these practices are vectors of intergenerational transmission of inequalities : gifts are largely based upon parents’ resources - and, above all, their wealth -, coresidency brings out significant inequalities to its beneficiaries, and social support, even if apparently answering children’s needs, plays an essential role in the reproduction of the gendered division of domestic work. As a consequence, this work advocates for a new focus on determinants and social impacts of family solidarity, and sheds new light on the relation between the three “pillars” of the welfare regime (public sector, market, family). Last but not least, it leads to a renovation of the traditional understanding of consequences of the unequal family intervention during the first years of adulthood.

Das Transfer-Einkommens-Derivativ ist einer der wichtigsten ökonomischen Parameter zur Beantwortung der Frage, ob Sozialrenten den unter Armut leidenden Älteren in voller Höhe zu Gute kommen oder ob politisch unerwünschte Verdrängungseffekte auftreten. Eine Verdrängung privater intergenerationeller Transfers durch die Vergabe von Sozialrenten wird dabei als Schwächung familiärer Strukturen angesehen, da erwachsene Kinder ihre vorherigen privaten finanziellen Unterstützungsleistungen an ihre bedürftigen Eltern kürzen oder gar aussetzen. Die staatlichen Leistungen kämen damit nicht vollständig den Bedürftigen zugute, weshalb die Wirksamkeit von Sozialrenten zur Bekämpfung von Altersarmut in Frage gestellt wird. Der aktuelle internationale Forschungsstand bestätigt die Existenz solcher Verdrängungseffekte bei Sozialtransferprogrammen in Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländern. Die der Dissertation zugrundeliegende empirische Erhebung zu Intrahaushaltstransfers in Mehrgenerationenhaushalten in drei Regionen Nordindiens (Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh und Delhi) hat jedoch gezeigt, dass theoretische Annahmen der Modelle und landestypische Gegebenheiten Indiens, wie etwa korrupte Vergabemuster bei den Sozialrenten, die Aussagekraft des Transfer-Einkommens-Derivativs zur Beurteilung der Effizienz der Sozialrenten stark einschränken. Die Daten zeigen überdies, dass der Nettotransferstrom abwärts verläuft, von den älteren zu den jüngeren Haushaltsmitgliedern. Dies steht im Gegensatz zu der gängigen Annahme, dass in Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländern die Älteren überwiegend Empfänger privater Transfers sind. / The transfer income derivative is one of the most important economic parameters in understanding whether social pensions serve the elderly poor, as the intended beneficiaries, or whether social pensions crowd out private transfers from family members. The crowding out effect of private transfers by public transfers is seen as weakening traditional family ties because adult children reduce or even cease private transfers to the needy elderly. In that case, public transfers may have no net effect on the income of the elderly calling into question the efficacy of public pension schemes in fighting old age poverty. The current state of international research provides evidence for these crowding out effects in developing or industrializing countries. Drawing on empirical research of intra-household transfers in households with elderly co-residence in three selected north Indian regions (Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi), this dissertation shows that theoretical assumptions of the models as well as country specific circumstances of India, such as corruption in the allocation of social pensions, limit the explanatory power of the transfer income derivative in judging the efficacy of such pensions. Additionally the data shows that private net transfers flow downward, from the elderly to the younger members of the household. This is in stark contrast to the common assumption that in developing and industrializing countries the elderly are mainly recipients of private transfers.