Adult Children's Education and Support to Older Parents in the United States

Background and Purpose: The well-being of older adults is frequently tied to support from their adult children. Educational expansion over the past half century provides older adults with greater resources to rely on via the education of their children. A challenge to establishing causality in these studies is that children's education is endogenous to the financial and caregiving support they provide to their parents. The aim of this study is to assess the causality between caring of older parents and adult children’s education by studying the association between adult children’s educational attainment and caring of parents (caregiving time, financial and knowledge support) in the last year of aging parent’s life.

Methods: This analysis draws on the 1994-2012 waves of the RAND HRS files and the RAND Family data files. The analyses use logistic regression models to examine whether adult children provide monetary, instrumental and knowledge support to their aging parents during the last year of life between 1992 and 2012. We address this endogeneity in children’s education and caregiving behavior and financial support towards parents to estimate if the relationship is causal by bringing three sets of innovations. First, we study the association between adult children’s educational attainment and caring of parents (caregiving time, financial and knowledge support) in the last year of aging parent’s life. Last year of life is a critical period when the aged often experience significant functional and cognitive decline and the need for caregiving is high. By assessing the end-of-life period, we are able to minimize survival bias and to some extent control for their need for caregiving support. Second, we adjust for the circumstance of death of elderly parents to differentiate if they were in long-term and home care settings in the last two years of their lives. Finally, we study models with parent fixed effect and compare the caregiving and financial support that siblings with different levels of education provide their parent. Parent fixed effect model allows us to control for parent’s needs for caregiving and financial support.

Results: Children’s education is significantly associated with monetary transfers and knowledge support in parent’s last year of life, but there was no link between children’s education and their instrumental help to parents. This association remains robust even after controlling for parent fixed effects. In addition, we find that daughters are more likely to help, but gender did not play the moderating role in the relationships between offspring education and support towards parents.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings add to a growing body of literature that urges policymakers to consider the multi-generational advantages of expanding educational opportunities in the United States. Positive returns from education benefit previous generations, not only those children themselves who received higher education. Policies targeted at expanding education could improve support towards family members, especially aging parents. This is particularly important for low-resource families without sufficient pension and medical insurance. Providing better options that encourage knowledge empowerment will also improve the family support.