The Gerontologist, Vol 39, Issue 6 648-657, Copyright © 1999 by The Gerontological Society of America

ARTICLES

The transfer of resources from middle-aged children to functionally limited elderly parents: providing time, giving money, sharing space

RF Boaz, J Hu and Y Ye
Department of Economics, City University of New York, NY 10016-4309, USA. rboaz@gc.cuny.edu

The transfer of resources from middle-aged children to their functionally limited elderly parents is addressed from the perspective of the children who may allocate time to caregiving, share household space, and give money to parents. A simultaneous-equations model estimates the extent to which the three modes of transfer are interdependent, given the parents' needs for resources and the children's ability to provide them. Caregiving is the primary mode of resource transfer and is of overriding importance for individuals who depend daily on help from other persons. Coresidence and financial assistance complement direct human assistance and, at the margin, have a substantially large effect on caregiving time. It is, therefore, relevant to consider all modes of transfer in order to better understand how families accommodate the needs of their frail and disabled members.

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