Why Parents Play Favorites: Explanations for Unequal Bequests

摘要

Parents often appear to "play favorites" when distributing financial resources among their adult children. Recent studies indicate that in any given year, approximately 7.5 percent of parents who make inter vivos transfers to their children give unequal amounts. Even when making bequests--where equal division is the norm--as many as 20 percent of parents treat their children unequally. Evidence of unequal transfers is consistent with a number of models of optimizing behavior, each of which predicts parents will favor certain children in allocating resources. The altruism model (Robert J. Barro, 1974; Gary S. Becker, 1974; Becker and Nigel Tomes, 1979) assumes parents want to equalize marginal utilities across family members--a goal they achieve by giving the largest transfers to their least well-off children. The exchange model (B. Douglas Bernheim et al. 1985; Donald Cox, 1987; Cox and Mark R. Rank, 1992) assumes parental transfers are payments for such child-provided services as affection and household help. The model predicts an unequal distribution of transfers because the price of these services varies with such child-specific factors as income or care-giving aptitude. Cox (2003) argues that parents may make transfers to promote the survivalof their genes. If parents are driven by evolutionary motives, they should favor biological children over adopted children and stepchildren, and they should give more to children who produce (or are likely to produce) grandchildren.