Arbeitsbereich

Bevölkerungsdynamik und Nachhaltiges Wohlbefinden

Auf einen Blick Projekte Publikationen Team

Projekt

Die demographischen Konsequenzen von generationenübergreifende Transferleistungen

Risto Conte Keivabu, Ole Hexel, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Emilio Zagheni; in Zusammenarbeit mit Fanny Annemarie Kluge (State of Berlin, Deutschland)

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Intergenerational transfers are fundamental features of human life that help to support individuals in vulnerable phases of the life course. In most societies, children and older individuals cannot finance their needs by themselves, and they thus require additional resources that more productive members of the society share with vulnerable age groups. The degree to which resources are reallocated differs across countries and stages of life. In most European and North American societies, we observe private downward transfers to an individual’s own children and grandchildren as well as investments in public education for the young. In contrast to young people, the elderly mainly receive public transfers in the form of pensions and health care. If these schemes do not reallocate sufficient resources to the elderly, they rely on familial exchange. In Asian countries, for example, very large private upward transfers and widespread cohabiting arrangements are observed.

This project has several components. In the first component, we studied the effects of mortality and kinship structure on downward transfers. The timing of transfers during the life course of the beneficiary influences their impact; they may help the beneficiary attain certain statuses, such as a university degree, parenthood, or homeownership, more easily or earlier. We combined survey data on household assets with mortality and kinship structure obtained from microsimulations in order to analyze how economic shocks and demographic change interact to constrain the economic opportunities of future generations. This method enabled us to go into more detail than country-level comparisons do, and, similarly, to overcome common limitations resulting from nonresponse and sample size issues in household surveys. We first focused on the USA and the development of race disparities in bequests received over the life course during the past three decades.

In the second component, we investigated how transfers help reduce the risk of dying during vulnerable periods of life. Looking at different continents around the globe, we assessed the transfer generosity and how this was related to health and survival. Transfer generosity was defined as the sum of net transfers redistributed to individuals at dependent ages. The main data source for this analysis was the National Transfer Accounts Project (a database of age-specific consumption, income, and public and private transfer patterns for more than 90 countries). We found that transfer generosity was negatively related to national mortality and positively related to longevity.

In the third component, we looked at the impact of migration on public finances. In light of demographic change, societal discussions have called into question the sustainability of public finances, especially in European welfare states. This issue is important not only for each EU country, but also for the union itself. Given that we have free movement of labor but no social union, demographic advantages will be reinforced, meaning that younger and more prosperous regions will attract even more migration from older and more disadvantaged regions, thus worsening the latter’s situation. We found that in the future, Eastern and Southern European countries will face large mismatches between taxes and benefits due to the combined effects of aging and migration. We also estimated net country contributions in two counterfactual scenarios of a transfer union.

Sterberisiko nach Großzügigkeit des Landes

Das Risiko, in jungen Jahren zu sterben, ist in großzügigeren Ländern geringer (Abb. 2 aus Vogt, Kluge und Lee 2020. Altersstandardisiertes Sterberisiko im Alter von 0 bis 20 Jahren und Anteil des an andere übertragenen Lebenseinkommens). © https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1920978117

Publikationen

Hexel, O.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.; Zagheni, E.:

Family structure and bequest inequalities between black and white households in the United States, 1989-2022

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2024-008. (2024)    

Kluge, F. A.; Vogt, T.:

The fiscal impact of population ageing in Germany: an unequal challenge for different levels of government

In: Ageing and fiscal challenges across levels of government, 63–76. Paris: OECD Publishing. (2020)    

Vogt, T. C.; Kluge, F. A.; Lee, R.:

Intergenerational resource sharing and mortality in a global perspective

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117:37, 22793–22799. (2020)    

Kluge, F. A.; Goldstein, J. R.; Vogt, T. C.:

Transfers in an aging European Union

Journal of the Economics of Ageing 13, 45–54. (2019)    

Kluge, F. A.:

Wieviel Geld zahlt jung an alt und umgekehrt?

In: Grünbuch Alternde Gesellschaft: wie das "neue Altern" unser Leben verändern wird, 27–30. München: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (2017)