Intergenerational financial transfers and health in a national sample from France

Financial transfers from parents to their adult children are a growing trend in contemporary societies, and this study investigates the relation of those transfers to their beneficiaries' health in France. In the 2005 nationally representative Gender and Generation Survey, nearly 6% of the subjects aged 25–49 years reported having received financial transfers during the last 12 months. Subjects who had achieved intergenerational upward mobility as well as those who had remained in the upper class were more likely to receive transfers, suggesting that parents rewarded those of their children who achieved most social success. After adjusting for a wide range of socio-demographic factors, subjects who had been given large transfers were much more likely to report very good health than subjects who had not been given anything. Findings were interpreted within the framework of sociological research on intergenerational transfers and that of lifecourse epidemiology.

► This is the first study to explore the relation of financial transfers from parents to their adult children's health.
► Adults who had received large transfers were much more likely to report very good health than those who did not receive any.
► Policy implications relate to the harmonization of private and public intergenerational transfers to reduce social inequalities in health.