Giving to Family versus Giving to the Community Within and Across Generations

In this paper, we examine relationship between giving to family, and community institutions, within and across generations, a previously unexplored subject. We investigate the relationship between these two types of transfer networks using new data from the Indonesian Family Life Surveys (IFLS). From our results, financial transfers to family members are positively correlated with giving to community organizations for both parent or origin households and adult split-offs living outside their households of origin. We also study the role of the family in shaping transfer behavior, and find that transfer behavior of adults living outside of their household of origin is significantly associated with parent or origin household transfer behavior. Our estimation strategy is based on the method of maximum simulated likelihood (MSL), which allows us to account for the correlation in error terms within and across generations.