Financial assistance from middle-aged couples to parents and children: racial-ethnic differences.

OBJECTIVES: To examine racial-ethnic differences in the allocation of financial transfers to parents, children, and others by middle-aged couples.

METHODS: Multinomial specification of alternative recipients of financial transfers, using data from the 1992 Health and Retirement Survey.

RESULTS: Transfer patterns are sensitive to parental health and wealth, to children being young or in school, as well as to the donors' health and wealth. Controlling for these and other factors, including family size and structure, Blacks and Whites are the most likely, and Hispanics the least likely, to financially help their parents compared to assisting offspring. Black couples are the most likely to sacrifice their own consumption to assist parents financially.

DISCUSSION: Future research on transfers should attempt to capture unmeasured noneconomic sources of variation proxied by the race-ethnicity indicator.