{"title":"Housing wealth of older adults and inter-generational transfers in China","authors":"Jing Liu , Xiaohui Zhang , Chunbing Xing","doi":"10.1016/j.chieco.2025.102371","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Identifying the determinants and motives of adult children's transfer payments to their parents has important policy implications in a rapidly aging society. Using data from the 2015 and 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this study analyzes how older adults' housing wealth affects their adult children's upward financial transfer payments. Our results show that an increase in parental housing wealth significantly increases financial transfers from adult children to their parents. This effect of housing wealth is more pronounced for families with multiple adult children, particularly when there is at least one son, compared to families with only one child, suggesting competition for inheritance among adult children. This conclusion is further supported by analyses that separate the sample by the level of financial assets and by the health status of older adults.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48285,"journal":{"name":"中国经济评论","volume":"90 ","pages":"Article 102371"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"中国经济评论","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X2500029X","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Identifying the determinants and motives of adult children's transfer payments to their parents has important policy implications in a rapidly aging society. Using data from the 2015 and 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this study analyzes how older adults' housing wealth affects their adult children's upward financial transfer payments. Our results show that an increase in parental housing wealth significantly increases financial transfers from adult children to their parents. This effect of housing wealth is more pronounced for families with multiple adult children, particularly when there is at least one son, compared to families with only one child, suggesting competition for inheritance among adult children. This conclusion is further supported by analyses that separate the sample by the level of financial assets and by the health status of older adults.
期刊介绍:
The China Economic Review publishes original works of scholarship which add to the knowledge of the economy of China and to economies as a discipline. We seek, in particular, papers dealing with policy, performance and institutional change. Empirical papers normally use a formal model, a data set, and standard statistical techniques. Submissions are subjected to double-blind peer review.