This paper tests for the motives for private income transfers. We consider two motives: altruism and exchange. The question of private-transfer motives is important because such motivation can influence the effects of public income transfers on the distribution of income. Using a household...

Can Eastern European families most severely impoverished during the transition to capitalism rely on private family safety nets? This question is likely critical for the transition's success, but little is known about family networks in Eastern Europe. We analyze newly available Polish household...

This chapter uses data from the 1992/93 and 1997/98 Vietnam Living Standards Surveys (VLSS) to describe patterns of money transfers between households. Rapid economic growth during the 1990's did little to diminish the importance of private transfers in Vietnam. Private transfers are large and...

Consumption is partly a social activity, yet most studies of consumer behavior treat households in isolation. We investigate familial relationships in consumption patterns using a sample of parents and their children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find a positive and statistically...

This paper uses the Viet Nam Living Standards Survey (VNLSS) to provide a snapshot of private transfer activity. We investigate private transfer patterns along a variety of dimensions, such as age, household resources, demographic make-up of the household and characteristics of the region of...

Despite recent advances in data collection and the growing number of empirical studies that examine private intergenerational transfers, there still exist significant gaps in our knowledge. Who transfers what to whom, and why do they it? I argue that some of these gaps could be filled by...

How can parents secure old-age support in the form of care, attention or financial transfers from their children? We explore the enforcement of implicit intergenerational agreements from a fresh angle by studying the possibility that the child's conduct is conditioned by the parents' example....

In recent years there has been rapidly growing interest in the implications of altruistic preferences for economic behavior. Undoubtedly most of this interest is fueled by altruism's often pivotal role in economic models and policy issues. Yet there is also an emerging consensus that empirical...

Most private giving between living generations takes the form of tied transfers, such as help with housing downpayments. We argue that parents provide help with downpayments in order to encourage the production of grandchildren, and that such a subsidization emanates from the demonstration...

Inheriting money can be a problem since the new wealth might sap the beneficiaries’ incentive to work. Or it could do the opposite, by facilitating entrepreneurship among those whose ambition to start a business had been stymied by a lack of cash. Recent evidence suggests inheritance-related...