In this chapter we present the estimates of the national transfers occurring among age groups in Spain in year 2000 using the NTA methodology proposed by Mason, Lee and others (2006). The life cycle deficit is positive-a surplus-for ages 27 to 57, while the rest of individuals become dependent, being the age reallocations of both age groups quite different. On the one hand, during childhood and youth, individual consumption is mainly financed by private transfers (69%) while public transfers only amount to a 32% being mainly in-kind transfers, through education and health systems. On the other hand, older people finance their lifecycle deficit mainly through asset-based reallocations (66%), followed by public transfers (41%, composed both of substantial cash transfers-retirement and survivor pensions-and in-kind health benefits). Interestingly, we find that the elderly are net payers of private transfers, implying that they are transferring money or housing services to the young members of their family. This surprising result could be explained by the high proportion of co resident elderly. This together with the fact that all individuals aged more than 16 pay and receive private transfers at the same time indicates that private support and hence intergenerational sharing tends to be mutual in Spain, implying that Spain is halfway between the northe rn European countries and the Latin-American countries.

Working papers of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research receive only limited review. Views or opinions expressed in working papers are attributable to the authors and do not necessarily refl ect those of the Institute.

In this paper we propose a way to measure the degree of government intervention on forward-from parents to children-and backward-from adult children to elderly parents-intergenerational family transfers (IFT). We carry out a discussion about the possibility of using Generational Accounts (GA) and National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodologies to generate indicators that could measure government intervention on both sides of IFT. As a result, we propose a modification of arrow diagrams used by Lee (in J. Human Res. 29:1027-1063, 1994b). An illustration of the results in the Spanish case indicates that the degree of government intervention on backward IFT is above that on forward IFT. This could be one of the main reasons to explain the Spanish low fertility rate.

In Japan due to the rapid population aging and its large financial pressure on pay-as-you-go retirement systems, the economic impact of bequest wealth has been drawing a tremendous amount of attention. Despite that, there are neither official statistics on bequest for the whole population, nor analyses of the historical evolution of bequest. Our study fills this gap by offering an estimate of bequest in Japan from 1850 to 2100, based on a computable general equilibrium model with realistic demography. Our model shows that the historical evolution of the bequest-to-output ratio in Japan follows the same U-shaped pattern described by Piketty (2011) for France. Moreover, we estimate that the annual flow of bequest represented between 4% and 6% of the output in the year 2000 and that it will reach between 7% and 13% of the output by year 2100.Deaton, A., 1997. The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Macroeconometric

, and two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and comments. Aid from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid during the last four years is also gratefully acknowledged. Any errors are my own.