Global Aging and Challenges to Families by Vern Bengtson

Author:Vern Bengtson [Bengtson, Vern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351328142
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

A More General Structural Model

Having singled out for consideration the provision of assistance for a home purchase and parental attitudes on this matter, we turn to a more general structural model of the determination of attitudes and transfers. Instead of considering each kind of assistance as a separate issue, with its own process of attitude determination, we estimate a model with an unobserved attitudinal construct—”parental responsibility for assisting children financially.” Four indicators were used to identify the construct: The parental obligation to provide aid for (a) a home purchase, (b) education, (c) continuous assistance, and (d) the purchase of an automobile.

Similarly, since parents may assist children financially in a variety of ways and with different goals, we created a summary, unobserved construct—”financial assistance provided to adult children”—for which three indicators were constructed from the survey data: (a) Number of types of help provided (for a car, schooling, ongoing support), (b) the transfer of at least $10,000 to children in the past 10 years, and (c) provision of assistance for a home purchase.

Using LISREL notation (Joreskog and Sorbom, 1993) this model can be written as

γ=Λη+ε⁢(3)

η=Bη+ΓX+ζ⁢(4)

where Y is a column vector of indicators of the latent variables η, Λ is a matrix of factor loadings relating the indicators to the latent variables, X is a vector of the exogenous “causes” of η, and B and Γ are matrices of structural parameters. The ε and ζ are error terms and are assumed to be mutually uncorrelated. The model structure, together with the parameter estimates, is reported in Figure 9.1.

Because the indicators of the endogenous variables are categorical, weighted least squares was used instead of maximum likelihood estimation. The fit of the model is quite good. Although the model chi-square (=90.789) is significant at p < .01, the CFI and TLI measures are .939 and .928, respectively, and RMSEA = .054—all of which indicate a satisfactory fit to the data. The unobserved constructs are identified by setting the loadings of the home acquisition terms equal to one; the remaining factor loadings are all positive and significant, suggesting that each of the latent variables is well-defined by its set of indicators.

In sign and significance, the parameter estimates in the structural portion of the model are almost identical with the 2SLS coefficients in Table 9.7. This is not surprising. In the analyses reported in Tables 9.3-9.6, in which the individual attitudes were examined separately, a considerable similarity in causal structure was noted for the different attitudes. This commonalty is reflected in the estimates of the current model.

We conclude that parental attitudes toward providing assistance and the transfer decisions of parents are best viewed as single constructs, at least in the Israeli context. It does not appear that there is much to be gained by analyzing the relationship between attitudes and behavior separately for the different kinds of transfers. Rather, the structure is effectively represented by one construct for a willingness to provide transfers (for whatever purpose) and a second representing a diffuse sense of parental responsibility.

The

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