Family Size and Intra-Family Transfers: An Empirical Analysis of Long-Term Care Using Chinese Household Data

Jie Pan, University of Arkansas

I consider the effect of an adult child’s own family size on care arrangements for and resource transfer to the elderly parents. A direct implication of family size is that it imposes constraints on the care provider’s resources. I incorporate the above novel perspective in an empirical study of long-term care for the elderly in China using household survey data. Exploiting exogenous variation in the number of births per couple before and after China’s One-Child Policy (1979), I identify the effect of an adult child’s family size on long-term care arrangements for her elderly parent. Having more offspring decreases the monetary transfer one makes towards the elderly parent. Specifically, the amount of transfer from a representative adult child to his or her elderly parent would decrease by approximately 25% if the adult child has three children instead of one.