Public policy and extended families
Subtitle: evidence from South Africa
By: Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan [and] Douglas Miller
Contributors: Mullainathan, Sendhil; Miller, Douglas; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics
Series: Working paper series / Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics -- working paper 01-31; Working paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics) -- no. 01-31.
Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 53
Description: Tightly knit extended families, in which people often give money to and get money from relatives, characterize many developing countries. These intra-family flows mean that public policies may affect a very different group of people than the one they target. To assess the empirical importance of these effects, we study a cash pension program in South Africa that targets the elderly. Focusing on three-generation households , we use the variation in pension receipt that comes from differences in the age of the elder(s) in the households. We find a sharp drop in the labor force participation of prime-age men in these households when elder women reach 60 years old or elder mean reach 65, the respective ages for pension eligibility. We also find that the drop in labor supply diminishes with family size, as the pension money is split over more people, and with educational attainment, as the pension money becomes less significant relative to outside earnings. Other findings suggest that power within the family might play an important role: (1) labor supply drops less when the pension is received by a man rather than by a woman; (2) middle aged men (those more likely to have control in the family) reduc.
Notes: Title from cover.

"March 2001." "March 27, 2001"--Abstract.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-41).

Abstract in HTML and working paper for download in PDF available via World Wide Web at the Social Science Research Network.

Supported in part by the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program.