Although the baby-boom cohorts are projected to have rates of childlessness which will rival those of women who had their children during the Depression, few studies have systematically examined the family structure, asset accumulation and decumulation, resource flows or care patterns of nulliparous persons from mid-life through old age. The overall goal of the proposed pilot project is to examine how childlessness impinges on the life course trajectory of those who have now completed their childbearing.
The specific aims of the proposed pilot study are to: * describe and model differentials in asset accumulation among nulliparous persons and parents of various parities in midlife and old age; * examine how the selectivity of childlessness favors asset accumulation while parenting favors human capital investments at the expense of asset accumulation; * consider if the childless sib(s) within a family are more likely to make financial or time transfers to their elderly parents than the sibs who are themselves parents and the extent to which parental transfers offset potential savings from foregone child rearing; * compare the density, type (e.g., inclusion of paid helpers) and durability of the care giving networks organized by functional dependent elderly with and without children; * and, examine if childless elderly persons bind and obligate distant kin or non-relatives through inter-vivos giving and/or potential bequests. Data for these analyses will be drawn from waves 1-3 of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and waves 1-2 of the Study of Asset and Health Dynamics (AHEAD) of the oldest-old.
