Is it true love? Altruism versus exchange in time and money transfers

This paper investigates what motivates intergenerational time and money transfers. We consider a model in which transfers may be driven not only by altruism, but also by exchange considerations. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to discriminate between the two motives. We show that both if we consider money transfers from parents to children and time transfers from children to parents, the empirical evidence rejects pure altruism in favor of exchange.