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Risk-sharing within families: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

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  • Akın, Ş. Nuray
  • Leukhina, Oksana

Abstract

We report strong empirical support for the presence of self-interest-based risk sharing within extended families in the U.S. A standard model of self-interest-based risk sharing predicts that the share of current family income consumed by a child positively depends on that child׳s permanent income. It follows that parental transfers to children that are expected to earn more over the period of risk-sharing arrangements should exhibit less sensitivity to the recipient׳s income fluctuations. We test this distinguishing prediction of self-interest-based risk sharing by exploiting the variation of transfer receipts among siblings, observed over 17 years of longitudinal data spanned by the Health and Retirement Study.

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  • Akın, Ş. Nuray & Leukhina, Oksana, 2015. "Risk-sharing within families: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 270-284.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:52:y:2015:i:c:p:270-284
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2014.12.005
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    1. Leandro De Magalhães & Dongya Koh & Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis, 2016. "Consumption and Expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 16/677, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK, revised 07 Oct 2016.
    2. Leandro DE MAGALHÃES & Dongya KOH & Räul SANTAEULILA-LLOPIS, 2019. "The Cost of Consumption Smoothing: Less Schooling and less Nutrition," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(3), pages 181-208, September.
    3. Arthur Charpentier & Lariosse Kouakou & Matthias Lowe & Philipp Ratz & Franck Vermet, 2021. "Collaborative Insurance Sustainability and Network Structure," Papers 2107.02764, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2022.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Risk sharing; Informal insurance arrangements; Inter vivos transfers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment

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