Motivation of Parent-Child Co-residence Behavior:Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

摘要

This paper examines the motivations of parent-child co-residence behavior in China using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.We test three possible motives:social norms,self-interest and altruism.We find that social norms play an important role in household co-residence behavior,showing that the belief that "sons take care of parents" is strong,and children in different birth orders take different responsibilities.Taking the one-child policy as a natural experiment,we compared co-residence behavior between only-child and multi-child families.This allowed us to test whether children in multi-child families with wealthier parents more often coreside in order to compete for a bequest.We find that parents'wealth is more appealing to children in multi-child families.The results support the life cycle theory that coresidence decisions are motivated by self-interest.We also find some evidence of altruism when parents and children make co-residence decisions.These findings provide some insights for designing future elder-support policies in China.