Family Support in Hard Times: Dynamics of Intergenerational Exchange after Adverse Events

Socioeconomic differences in parental financial support, coresidence, and advice: A portrait of undergraduate students in the Canadian Prairies

“…As a second contribution—one most central to this special issue's theme of family diversity—these findings demonstrate differences in the types and degrees of tangible support provided to Canadian undergraduate students according to socioeconomic background. Consistently, variations in financial support occurred in relation to parental education attainment—a finding that aligns with the majority of previous research out of the United States (Cobb‐Clark & Gørgens, 2014; Fingerman et al., 2015 ; Hardie & Seltzer, 2016; Huang et al., 2018; Manzoni 2016; Schaller & Eck, 2021; Swartz et al., 2011; Wightman et al., 2012). Whereas literature out of Canada, the United States and Australia has shown mixed findings concerning the relationship between parental education and coresidence (Bilette et al., 2011; De Marco & Berzin, 2008; Fingerman et al., 2015; Krahn et al., 2018; Swartz et al., 2011; Ward & Spitze, 2007), we did observe a linkage between the two—one that may be explained by a focus on a student sample, where parental investment and the transmission of cultural capital may be particularly relevant (Waithaka, 2014).…”

“…The nature and extent of financial assistance has been clearly related to family socioeconomic background in American and Australian research. Studies show that parents with higher educational attainment are more likely to provide any financial support to young adult children (Hardie & Seltzer, 2016; Manzoni, 2016; Schaller & Eck, 2021; Swartz et al., 2011; Wightman et al., 2012), that they provide more frequent financial support to young adult children (Fingerman et al., 2015), and that they provide on average a greater amount of money to their children (Fingerman et al., 2015). Parents’ occupational prestige has also been connected to higher likelihoods of financial transfers and greater transfer amounts (Huang et al., 2021).…”

Accounting for Black-White Wealth Differences: A Stylized Model of Wealth Accumulation

“…Parental financial transfers can also accelerate adult children's accumulation of assets (Gale andScholz, 1994, McGarry, 2016;Killewald, Pfeffer, and Schachner, 2017;Pfeffer and Killewald, 2017;Bhutta et al, 2020;Schaller and Eck, 2020). Parents can directly finance a home purchase through gifting some or all of the down payment to the child, co-signing the mortgage to get a better loan rate, or both.…”