Declining levels of fertility and mortality are leading to rapid population aging in many developing countries. These demographic changes can mean an increase in care giver burden for adult children, or a decline in the level of support provided to parents, in societies where kin are the main support networks for elderly persons. Aging parents are living longer but adult children have fewer siblings with whom to share filial duties. This project will examine the relationship of demographic, social and economic change to changing patterns of intergenerational exchange in the context of a modernizing society- Peninsular Malaysia. Malaysia has been experiencing fairly rapid fertility declines, increasing levels of education, urbanizing, and economic expansion, and a narrowing of the gender gap in education and labor force participation. Using data from the Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS), fielded in 1976/77 and 1988/89, this project will identify changes in patterns and determinants of transfers between adult children and aging parents. Other factors to consider are changes in the relative resources of the two generations, kinship availability, and motives for exchange. The subsamples available in the MFLS permit two types of comparisons: (a) change across birth cohorts measured at the same ages, and (b) changes across life stages for one birth cohort of men and women. In addition, the different response to change observed within Peninsular Malaysia's three main ethnic groups -- Malay, Chinese, and Indian -- will be assessed. Transfers may take three forms -- coresidence, money, and material goods. Across the two waves of the survey, the study will assess changes in the type, level, and direction of transfers and will attribute the observed differences to changes in levels of the determinants (compositional change) and changes in the effects of the determinants (behavioral change). Variations of economic utility theory (altruism, exchange, and warm glow) and social exchange theory (generalized, restricted exchange) guide the interpretation of motives for making transfers. Tobit, probit, ordered probit and multinomial logit regression methods will be used to analyze changes in transfer behaviors. Sample selection related to coresident status will be considered.
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