It is argued that parents provide help with housing downpayments in order to encourage the production of grandchildren, and that such a subsidization emanates from the "demonstration effect:" a child's propensity to furnish parents with attention and care can be conditioned by parental example. Parents who desire such transfers in the future have an incentive to make transfers to their own parents in order to instill appropriate preferences in their children. This generates a derived demand for grandchildren since potential grandparents will be treated better by their adult children if the latter have their own children to whom to demonstrate the appropriate behavior. Empirical work indicates behavior consistent with subsidization of the production of grandchildren and the demonstration effect.
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Paper provided by University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF) in its series Discussion Papers with number
18751.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Bernheim, B Douglas & Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1985.
"The Strategic Bequest Motive,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(6), pages 1045-76, December.
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Bernheim, B Douglas & Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1986.
"The Strategic Bequest Motive,"
Journal of Labor Economics,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages S151-82, July.
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Henderson, J Vernon & Ionnides, Yannis M, 1986.
"Tenure Choice and the Demand for Housing,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 53(210), pages 231-46, May.
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