Intergenerational Linkages in Consumption Behavior

Donald Cox (), Serena Ng () and Andreas Waldkirch

No 482, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: Consumption is partly a social activity, yet most studies of consumer behavior treat households in isolation. We investigate familial relationships in consumption patterns using a sample of parents and their children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find a positive and statistically significant parent-specific effect on children's consumption even after controlling for the effect of parental income, and we find similar effects for sibling pairs. Child consumption responds negatively to large post-retirement shortfalls in consumption of the parents. This behavior holds up even after allowing for the possibility of smaller parent-to-child transfers made necessary by the parental consumption shortfalls. These results suggest that although income is an important source of the intergenerational correlation, parental choices and experiences also affect consumption behavior of the children.

Keywords: Family; income; tastes; retirement; learning. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D12 E21 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2000-11-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp482.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Intergenerational Linkages in Consumption Behavior (2004)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Linkages in Consumption Behavior (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boc:bocoec:482

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().