Transfers from older parents to their adult children in Taiwan and the Philippines

This study examines the extent to which older parents provide material resources and services to their children in the Philippines and Taiwan, and the influence of coresidence on reported transfers between parents and their adult children. The data used in the analyses are from two nationally representative household surveys of persons aged 60 and older in the Philippines and Taiwan. Results show that almost half of older parents in the Philippines provide resources to non-coresident children and only 4 percent of older Taiwanese parents currently make such transfers. When transfers with coresident children are included, older parents show much greater involvement in family support: 69 and 14 percent of older parents in the Philippines and Taiwan, respectively, say they make transfers to children. The difference between the two measures diminishes with age, however, as overall levels of giving decline. Results from multivariate models show that while both measures are associated in similar ways with key factors such as age, health, gender, and economic resources, the association between living arrangements and intergenerational transfers varies across measures. These results suggest that older adults' in these countries tend to exhibit a preference for transfers to the children with whom they live, and that coresidence with grandchildren may be an indirect transfer of services to non-coresident adult children. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers.