Bargaining Power within Couples and Support for Parents on Both Sides

Guangying Chen, Tsinghua University

This paper provides a new view on intergenerational transfer and household decision-making by revealing the impact of intra household bargaining on the decision of supporting parents. Using 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) baseline data, families living together with at least one parent alive for each are chosen as our target samples. Bargaining power of husband and wife is measured by education and first Hukou type, and the support for parents is measured by contact. OLS and Probit regression are used to determine whether bargaining power influences the contact with one’s own parents and in-laws. The results show that the probability of living with husband’s parent and the ratio of visiting frequency of husband’s parent are mainly positively associated with the education gap between husband and wife, while Hukou gap has negative correlation with these contacts.