Living Arrangements of Sub-Saharan African Elders and Upward Intergenerational Transfers: Evidence from Senegal

Willy Adrien Yakam Yemtchoua , Université de Montréal
Yves Carriere, Université de Montréal
Thomas LeGrand, Université de Montréal

In several sub-Saharan African countries, social security, pension and public health systems, essential for wellbeing, are insufficient or non-existent. In these conditions, family acts as the main provider of support for elders though coresidence with non-dependent adult and intergenerational transfers (financial and material) from non-coresident. This paper examines these forms of support in order to understand how living alone or only with their spouse, rather than coresiding with non-dependent adult children influence the receipt of intergenerational financial/material transfers to older people in a SSA country such as Senegal. Using the first and second round of Poverty and Family Structure Survey, a national survey carried out in 2006 and 2010, we estimate a recursive bivariate probit model with simultaneous equations in order to reduce possible endogeneity bias. This study aims to contribute to the emerging literature on intergenerational relationships in SSA context.

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 Presented in Session 4. Marriage, Family, Households, & Unions