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This dissertation contributes to the literature on intergenerational transfers by
examining the dynamics of financial assistance provided by midlife parents to their
adult children across the life course. This dissertation also examines whether the
cumulative advantage hypothesis stretches across generational lines during co-occurring
life course experiences so that financial transfers convey additional advantages to
adult children. I use panel data from four waves of the Health and Retirement Study
(1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998) to provide a broad picture of the process of financial
assistance to younger adults within extended families. I constructed within-family
trajectories of assistance to demonstrate that financial transfers are more common
than previously estimated. Over 60% of all midlife-parent households gave $500 or
more at least once and many parents gave multiple transfers and/or gave transfers
to several adult children during a seven-year period.
In an examination of kinship structures that differentiates between paternal children
and maternal children within blended families, I use nonlinear logistic regression
models to show that the decreased likelihood that fathers provided financial assistance
to children from a previous marriage accounted solely for the reduction in transfers
that all stepchildren received compared to biological children. Multilevel regression
models demonstrate that transfer amounts are also influenced by kinship structures
and parental resources. Additional analyses show adult child life course transitions
related to schooling and coresidence were influential for parents' transfer behaviors
while other life course transitions related to work, marriage, home ownership and
the addition of a grandchild to the family were not influential. The number of life
course transitions experienced by adult children during later waves significantly
increased the likelihood of transfer receipt. However, the diversification of experiences
over time made it difficult to pinpoint specific life course transitions relevant
to financial assistance from parents. The strong impact of previous transfers upon
the likelihood that adult children would receive transfers at later waves shows that
patterns of repeated transfers were common for many intergenerational families. I
argue that future research should analyze the impact of parental wealth on transfers
and should explicitly examine parents' motives for giving money to adult children.
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