Brown, Meta. 2006. “Informal Care and the Division of End-of-Life Transfers.” Journal of Human Resources 41(1): 191–219.
Unmarried parents in the AHEAD study derive the majority of their long-term care hours from their children, and childcaregivers are generally unpaid. This paper examines the extent to which the division of end-of-life transfers compensates caregiving children. In a model of siblings’ altruistic contribution of care to a shared parent, the parent’s estate division is found to influence total family care, even where care contingencies are unenforced. Evidence in the AHEAD data that end-of-life transfers favor both current and expected caregivers, and that children make altruistic but resource-constrained caregiving decisions, is consistent with a theory of estate division in which planned end-of-life transfers elicit care from altruistic children.
Meta Brown is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin. The research completed herein was supported in part by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College pursuant to a grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration funded as a part of the Retirement Research Consortium. The opinions and conclusions are solely those of the author and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policy of the Social Security Administration or any agency of the Federal Government, or the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. I am grateful to the National Institutes of Aging and Child Health and Development for additional support, to James Andreoni, Robert Pollak, Purvi Sevak, the referees of this journal, and seminar participants at HEC Montreal, UNC, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Wisconsin for valuable comments and suggestions, and to Misuzu Azuma for excellent research assistance. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning August 2006 through July 2009 from the author at mbrown@ssc.wisc.edu.