Do Siblings Free-Ride in 'Being There' for Parents?

When siblings are concerned for the well-being of their elderly parents, the costs of caregiving and long-term commitment create a free-rider problem. If siblings living near their parents can share the costs, this positive externality exacerbates the under-provision of proximate living. Location decisions allow siblings to make a commitment to not provide long-term support for parents, and if decisions are made in birth order, elder siblings may enjoy the first-mover advantage. To quantify these effects, we study siblings' location decisions relative to parents by estimating a sequential participation game that features rich heterogeneity. We find moderate altruism and cooperation in the US that imply: (1) limited strategic behavior: more than 90% of children have a dominant strategy; and (2) non-negligible free-riding: of the families with multiple children, had siblings fully internalized externality and jointly maximized their utility, 18.3% more parents would have had at least one child nearby