Living Arrangements of Mothers and Their Adult Children Over the Life Course

Abstract

Early in the last century, it was commonplace for elderly women to live with their adult children. Over time the prevalence of this type of living arrangement declined as incomes increased. In more recent decades, coresidence between adult children and their retirement age parents has become more common as children rely on parental support later into adulthood. We use panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine the living arrangements of older women and their adult children over the life course. We pay particular attention to the relationship between coresidence and indicators of parental and child needs. Our results suggest that for much of the life course, coresidence serves to benefit primarily the adult children rather than the older parent. We also highlight a little known phenomenon, that of children who never leave the parental home and remain coresident well into their later adult years.

The living arrangements of elderly widows, their children, and their children's spouses

“…Recent empirical evidence seems to confirm our findings. For instance, regarding the case of poorest single children, Wiemers et al (2017) find that there is a significant proportion of adult children sufficiently disabled or unable to care for and support themselves that live with the parent throughout the life-cycle. This would help to explain the single children's efforts to live with their mother.…”

“…Glick and Van-hook (2011) find that intergenerational households experience greater continuity in composition when one side has a disproportionate share of the economic resources in the household. More recently, Wiemers et al (2017) find that co-residence between adult children and their mothers has become more common as children rely on parental support later into adulthood. Finally, Raymo et al (2017) find that elderly who did not complete high school spend a larger proportion of their remaining life co-residing with an adult child(ren).…”

Stabilitás és változás az idősek háztartásszerkezetében

“…Az is fontos információ lenne, hogy milyen motivációk állnak a mögött, hogy a felnőtt gyermekek még nem költöztek el a szüleiktől, illetve, hogy újra összeköltöznek velük. Az erre vonatkozó nemzetközi irodalom arra utal, hogy ezen együttélési formák hát-terében a gyermekek szükségletei erősebb motivációként jelennek meg, mint az időseké, azaz általánosságban a gyermekeknek nagyobb szükségük van a szüleikkel való együttélésre, mint a szüleiknek velük (Wiemers et al 2016). Ezeknek a kérdéseknek a vizsgálatához olyan adatállományokra lenne szükség, amelyekben a gyermekek és a szülők életpályáját is egyéni szinten követhet-nénk.…”

Do siblings free-ride in “being there” for parents?

“…Studying the location decision is important because the location pattern is a critical determinant of formal and informal care arrangements (see Checkovich and Stern (2002), Engers and Stern (2002), Bonsang (2009), andHiedemann, Sovinsky, andStern (2013)). There are myriad economics and noneconomics studies on co-residence and collocation between elderly parents and their children (e.g., Börsch-Supan, Kotlikoff, and Morris (1988), Dostie and Léger (2005), Hank (2007), Fontaine, Gramain, and Wittwer (2009), Johar and Maruyama (2011), Compton and Pollak (2013), Johar and Maruyama (2014), Maruyama (2015), and Wiemers, Slanchev, McGarry, and Hotz (2017)), but few investigate the noncooperative decision of family living arrangements, 1 and none quantifies the free-rider problem among siblings, although the discrete and long-term nature of location decisions may reinforce the free-riding and strategic behavior involved in the coordination of caregiving among siblings.…”