Intervivos Giving Over the Lifecycle

We use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study on money parent give to adult children over sixteen years. We study the scale of giving, regularity over time, and factors shaping it. Parents give $5,000 to children with the one-third of parents who give, averaging $14,000 over two years. There is persistence in giving declining with age and resulting in total gifts of $50,000 from age 53 to death excluding bequests. Single parents who expect a long life span and are risk averse give less money to children; consistent with a lifecycle model of consumption including transfers. * Corresponding author email: [email protected]. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Institute on Aging through grant R01AG024047. Some data used in the study were obtained from RAND HRS Data, Version H. Produced by the RAND Center for the Study of Aging, with funding from the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration. We thank Joanna Carroll, Patricia St.Clair and Sandy Chien for excellent data development and programming assistance.