Economic Reforms and Intergenerational Support in China

Xie, Yu

Abstract

This proposal seeks funding to support a statistical analysis of an existing dataset on the economic and social well being of contemporary urban China. The dataset was collected by the PI in collaboration with two Chinese scholars in summer 1999 in three Chinese cities (Wuhan, Shanghai, and Xi'an) and is being cleaned for statistical analyses. This was unique in that both an elderly person and his/her adult child, if available, were contacted separately. The data will be released to the research community through ICPSR. The first goal of the study is to test, in the Chinese context, hypotheses based on three standard explanations for intergenerational support: the power model, the exchange model, and the altruism model. Next, it will develop a new model of cultural beliefs. It will be shown that cultural beliefs in supporting the elderly, measured both for the elderly generation and for their adult children, explain a significant proportion of variation in intergenerational support. Finally, capitalizing on the regional variation in the depth of economic reforms, the study will evaluate the effect of marketization on the extent to which each theoretical model is applicable across the three cities.