This study analyzes upstream intergenerational transfers from middle-ages children to their elderly parents. We formulate a model in which the middle-aged child transfers both money and time to an elderly parent, based on an altruistic motive. We test the altruistic assumption empirically and...

A general finding in the empirical literature on charitable giving is that among older individuals, both the probability of giving and the conditional amount of donations decrease with age, ceteris paribus. In this paper, we use data on giving by alumni at an anonymous university to investigate...

A model is presented that explains the mix between funded and unfunded pension systems. It turns out that total pension and the relative shares of the two systems may be explained and are determined by the population growth rate, technological growth, the time-preference discount rate, the...

This paper discusses three alternative assumptions concerning household preferences (altruism, self-interest, and a desire for dynasty building) and shows that these assumptions have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division. After reviewing some of the literature on...

In this paper, we conduct a theoretical analysis of why individuals provide care and attention to their elderly parents using a two-period overlapping generations model with endogenous saving and a "contest success function" and test this model using micro data from a Japanese household survey,...

This paper considers the impact of adverse health shocks that hit an individual's partner on subjective well-being. Using data on couples from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2006, I compare the losses in well-being caused by own and spousal disability using...

Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

In Germany, informal home care is preferred to professional care services in the public discussion as well as in legal care regulations. However, they ascribe only minor importance to the opportunity costs care givers have to face. Therefore, this paper explores the influence home care has on...

This paper considers the impact of adverse health shocks that hit an individual's partner on subjective well-being. Using data on couples from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2006, I compare the losses in well-being caused by own and spousal disability using...

In this paper, I contrast the effects of individual and spousal disability on subjective wellbeing and labor supply using data on couples from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2006. I find that both men and women reduce their propensity to work when they or their partner...