Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China
In the mass movement of sending urban youth to the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution, many families with multiple age-eligible children were forced to make a send-down choice among the siblings. We exploit this rare social experiment and employ data on urban twins in China to investigat...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of Oxford
2022
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| _version_ | 1797108443094450176 |
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| author | Zhang, H Zhang, J Zhang, N |
| author_facet | Zhang, H Zhang, J Zhang, N |
| author_sort | Zhang, H |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | In the mass movement of sending urban youth to the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution, many families with multiple age-eligible children were forced to make a send-down choice among the siblings. We exploit this rare social experiment and employ data on urban twins in China to investigate the effect of childhood send down experience on children’s old-age support to parents. We find that compared with their twin siblings who had stayed in the city, send-downs were less likely to make a monetary transfer to parents and also tended to transfer less. We show that the inferior transfer behavior of send-downs was not due to any income disadvantage or selection of family’s send-down choice in terms of children’s altruism endowment. After ruling out the income and selection channel explanations, we posit that the inferior transfer behavior of send-downs is driven by the adverse effect of childhood send-down experience on children’s willingness to provide old-sage support to parents, which could work through both pure altruism and warm glow. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:29:18Z |
| format | Working paper |
| id | oxford-uuid:b57a3114-db77-4bd8-b28f-952974eb806b |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:29:18Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | University of Oxford |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:b57a3114-db77-4bd8-b28f-952974eb806b2022-12-07T11:42:36ZChildhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in ChinaWorking paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:b57a3114-db77-4bd8-b28f-952974eb806bEnglishSymplectic ElementsUniversity of Oxford2022Zhang, HZhang, JZhang, NIn the mass movement of sending urban youth to the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution, many families with multiple age-eligible children were forced to make a send-down choice among the siblings. We exploit this rare social experiment and employ data on urban twins in China to investigate the effect of childhood send down experience on children’s old-age support to parents. We find that compared with their twin siblings who had stayed in the city, send-downs were less likely to make a monetary transfer to parents and also tended to transfer less. We show that the inferior transfer behavior of send-downs was not due to any income disadvantage or selection of family’s send-down choice in terms of children’s altruism endowment. After ruling out the income and selection channel explanations, we posit that the inferior transfer behavior of send-downs is driven by the adverse effect of childhood send-down experience on children’s willingness to provide old-sage support to parents, which could work through both pure altruism and warm glow. |
| spellingShingle | Zhang, H Zhang, J Zhang, N Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China |
| title | Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China |
| title_full | Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China |
| title_fullStr | Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China |
| title_full_unstemmed | Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China |
| title_short | Childhood send-down experience and old-age support to parents: the twins experiment in China |
| title_sort | childhood send down experience and old age support to parents the twins experiment in china |
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