The intriguing relation between parenting styles and eldercare

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effect of longevity on parenting choices from a life course perspective. We develop an overlapping generations model to address a core tradeoff that young parents face when investing in their children’s human capital. They can choose a low-time-cost demanding strategy that risks straining intergenerational relations or a time-intensive pedagogical method that fosters familial bonds at the cost of reduced parental income. Aging parents value attention of their adult children, who uphold the eldercare norm while bringing the shared history of their relationship into the caregiving environment. The rising future need for eldercare heightens the value of pedagogical effort for building relational capital and reveals parental demandingness as counterproductive. Our analysis suggests that longer life expectancy reduces the prevalence of authoritarian parenting practices, while higher income promotes greater pedagogical effort. We characterize the steady states of parenting styles and human capital and then examine their dynamic responses to changes in longevity and eldercare time.

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Reference

Simon Fan, Yu Pang, and Pierre Pestieau, “The intriguing relation between parenting styles and eldercare”, Review of Economics of the Household, January 2026, 32 pages.