Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/78036 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Kiel Working Paper No. 1858
Publisher: 
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel
Abstract: 
In many poor countries with high emigration rates elderly people are left behind without care when their children migrate. Without a functioning market in private care migrants face a difficult trade-off between working their way out of poverty and providing informal care once their parents become frail or sick. I develop a non-cooperative model of siblings' interactions that explains how chain migration can lead to a breakdown of traditional caregiving structures while an opposing endogenous effect increases family members' incentives to specialize as caregiver. The model's predictions are tested using novel data from Moldova and found to perform better than predictions of some established migration models. The empirical analysis suggests that migration and staying in order to provide care are strategic complements for children of elderly parents in most families. This is evidence of a promising resilience of families' informal security arrangements to large-scale migration.
Subjects: 
migration
elderly care
remittances
intra-family allocation
informal security networks
JEL: 
F22
J14
I19
D10
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
605.06 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.