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(Correspondent: Wang Tianjian) Recently, Assistant Professor Yang Siqiang of our school has published a co-authored paper “Financial Transfers from Parents to Adult Children” as the first author, in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume No.208, 2023.

This paper uses 1996–2014 longitudinal HRS data to establish the relative importance of intervivos transfers, bequests and coresidency in the United States. The paper firstly computes the relative importance of intervivos transfers versus bequests from two perspectives, and find that from the aggregate perspective that pools all data into a single cross-section, bequests account for 37% of total gifts, while from the parent-level longitudinal perspective, the number is only 7%. This difference reflects the fact that large bequests are highly concentrated and play an influential role at the aggregate level, while at the micro parent-level, intervivos transfers constitute the main form of financial support for most parents. Regarding coresidency, the paper finds that although older children and parents tend to coreside when the child is helping the parent, coresidency tends to be more prevalent among poorer, younger parents and their children. In addition, Children who ever coreside with parents also receive larger total intervivos transfers.

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is a widely recognized authoritative international journal. It is in the list of “level-B” foreign academic journals rated by the economic discipline of Nankai University.