Longitudinal analysis of exchanges of support between parents and children in the UK

TL;DR

This study analyzes how support exchanges between parents and adult children in the UK vary over time and by demographics, revealing patterns of reciprocity and substitution in practical and financial help.

Contribution

It introduces a novel modeling approach to jointly analyze parent and child reports, accounting for mother-father report correlation in large longitudinal datasets.

Findings

Support exchanges vary by demographic factors.

Reciprocity exists in support transfers.

Substitution occurs between practical and financial support.

Abstract

We consider how exchanges of support between parents and adult children vary by demographic and socio-economic characteristics and examine evidence for reciprocity in transfers and substitution between practical and financial support. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study 2011-19, repeated measures of help given and received are analysed jointly using multivariate random effects probit models. Exchanges are considered from both a child and parent perspective. In the latter case, we propose a novel approach to account for correlation between mother and father reports and develop an efficient MCMC algorithm suitable for large datasets with multiple outcomes.