This paper presents estimates of how an increase in welfare benefits for the welfare-eligible affects the provision of parental support in the form of both financial transfers and shared residence based on an overlapping-generations framework incorporating game-theoretic interactions among parents their adult children and the government. The empirical results obtained from two longitudinal data sets indicate that the parents view a dollar of income earned by their daughters as equivalent to a dollar increase in welfare benefits. However there exists only a small trade-off between the generosity of government aid and the incidence of parental aid. Data are for the United States and are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women for 1968-1984 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for 1979-1984. (EXCERPT)

This paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross-area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization. The model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies. Longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in Laguna Province in the Philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels. The impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program. A basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control (either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies) Pareto efficient. The model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be Pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and/or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies (the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households) is efficient. When both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest.

Forces which link biological and behavioral factors to infant mortality and fertility in the United States are examined. Estimates can be arrived at if all of the important types of behavior affecting infant survival prices and income constraints facing households are diligently gathered. Using equations to determine the relationship between a family health endowment index in conjunction with a childs health information about optimal prenatal and postnatal behavior can be estimated and observed. This estimate which is strongly a factor of parental and environmental health related factors attempts to characterize the biological effects of parents behavior on birthweight gestation and the rate of fetal growth. Another estimate presented is one which establishes a link between biological effects of birth order on infant mortality. In this analysis factors such as medical care during pregnancy mothers rate of smoking mothers age duration of breastfeeding mothers race and childs sex were included. Household socioeconomic and health data were also estimated in order to understand state and county ability to provide adequate health facilities for pre and postnatal maternal care. In particular results suggest that child mortality declines in developed countries and that mothers seek prenatal medical care in early stages of their pregnancy when risk is anticipated. Further study of the differential pattern of black and white fertility behavior in regard to seeking medical care is warranted.

The authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex-specific survival differentials of rural Indian children based on standard census and household survey data....[They] explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults. Data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey. (EXCERPT)