Time and Money Transfer to Elderly Parents: Family Assistance and Labor Market Behavior

Wei-Jun Jean Yeung, New York University

This paper examines the extent to which the baby-boom generation assists aging parents with time and money and how the helping behavior affects the helpers' labor market activities. We also compare behavior of the baby boomers to that of their predecessors. Patterns of assistance are similar, with one exception: the gender difference has narrowed. Sizable fractions of these individuals provided assistance to their elderly parents at some time during 1992. Time help was much more common than money help and health-related help tended to constitute a small part of the help to parents. Evidence indicates that baby boomers are assisting their elderly parents without changing the amount of time they spend working in the labor market. The findings suggest it is the challenge of juggling these activities collectively, rather than possible lost time at work, that merits the concerted attention of researchers, employers, and policy makers.