The Long Arm Of Parental Advantage: Socio-Economic Background And Parental Financial Transfers Over Adult Children'S Life Courses

Social-science scholarship has established that high socio-economic status parents make greater investments in their children, contributing to inequalities in child outcomes. Yet we know comparatively little about whether or not-and if so how-these parents continue to advantage their offspring throughout their adult lives. In this paper, we use a life-course approach to theorize the dynamics of parental financial transfers over children's adult life courses, and how these may differ by socio-economic background. We then leverage high-quality Australian survey data (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey 2001-2018; n = 108,905 observations and 18,611 individuals) and generalized structural equation models for panel data to test the theoretical predictions. We found that adult children from higher socio-economic backgrounds received more transfers and larger amounts than adult children from lower socio-economic backgrounds, with differences being most pronounced during young adulthood. Importantly, these differences emerged in models adjusted for a range of variables capturing adult children's socio-economic circumstances, including their income levels. Additional analyses indicated that adult children's life-course events and transitions (e.g., getting married, entering homeownership, and attending college) increased the probability and amount of parental financial transfers; yet there were no differences in their effects by socio-economic background.