Financial and non-financial private transfers from close ones: beyond family and kinship

ABSTRACT

Internally defined ties such as friendship, trust, or closeness might enhance private transfers. The present study examines the role of these ties on top of the impact of genetic relatedness and legal family relations using families with varied access to filial support as a source of heterogeneity. We investigate, in addition to family support, financial and non-financial transfers received from unrelated individuals by mature adults in childless, dispersed (that is, with an adult child living at a significant distance from parents), and local families using the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We find that the structure of support given to mature adults indeed depends on internally defined ties that are independent from family ties, controlling for other relevant factors. The positive impact on informal support of internally defined ties concerns particularly, but is not limited to, non-financial support.

KEYWORDS:

• Family
• kinship
• social ties
• private transfers
• informal support
• proximity
• altruism
• fictive ties
• confidant network

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Joan Costa-i-Font, Agata Górny, Marta Kindler, and Anna Kordasiewicz for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical considerations

Ethical guidelines have been met while conducting this research.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Narodowe Centrum Nauki [grant number 2015/19/D/HS4/00813]. This paper uses data from SHARE Wave 4 (DOI: 10.6103/SHARE.w4.600). The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and FP7 (SHARE-PREP: N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: N°227822, SHARE M4: N°261982). Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064, HHSN271201300071C) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org).