Financial Assistance Patterns from Midlife Parents to Adult Children: A Test of the Cumulative Advantage Hypothesis

TitleFinancial Assistance Patterns from Midlife Parents to Adult Children: A Test of the Cumulative Advantage Hypothesis
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2016
AuthorsPadgett, CS, R Remle, C
JournalJournal of Family and Economic Issues
Volume37
Issue3
Pagination435-449
Date Published09/2016
KeywordsAdult children, Demographics, Methodology
Abstract

Young adults may receive financial assistance from midlife parents as they experience life course transitions often associated with establishing independent status, such as schooling, marriage or gaining full-time work. We used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (1992 2002) and hypothesized that adult children in the United States who received repeated financial transfers from midlife parents experienced cumulative advantages across time. We also examined the data using parental household characteristics to reinforce the importance of previous transfer behaviors. We found that the receipt of prior transfers, family structure and parental household income were the strongest determinants of the odds that parents gave financial assistance to adult children as both generations aged. The findings also supported the cumulative advantage theory due to the larger likelihood of continued transfers. 2015 Springer Science Business Media New York

URLhttp://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84939824009andpartnerID=40andmd5=8057d7abf4ea23be7e57e35c87355ef3
DOI10.1007/s10834-015-9461-4
Endnote Keywords

Adult children/Cumulative advantage/Intergenerational transfers/Midlife parents

Endnote ID

999999

Citation Key6451