Who Cares for the Elderly? Intrafamily Resource Allocation and Migration in Mexico

This paper considers the question of the intrafamily allocation of elderly care in the context of international migration. To address this, I take a non-cooperative view of family decision-making and estimate best response functions for individual physical and financial contributions as a function of siblings contributions. I account for the endogeneity of siblings contributions by using siblings' characteristics as instrumental variables. I find evidence that children's financial contributions function as strategic complements while their time contributions operate as strategic substitutes, suggesting that giving may be based on both strategic bequest and public good motivations. In addition, the results from a simulation generating an exogenous switch in child's migrant status show a decrease in time and potentially even financial contributions for elderly parents.