Altruism, exchange and reciprocity: inter vivo transfers between two and three generations.

Summary This thesis focuses on the inter vivos transfer behaviors that circulate within families and proposes an extension of the analysis framework from two to three generations. Based on a microeconomical modelization of aid decisions, the predictions of the various theoretical hypotheses considered serve as a reference for the econometric study applied to two surveys on solidarity conducted in 1992 in France. With two generations, parents and children, downward helping behaviors are articulated around altruism where gifts are freely given and exchange characterized by immediate or deferred reciprocity relationships. The results underline the plural nature of aid over the life cycle, human investments for the young and patrimonial transmissions for the elderly, but the anticompensation and retrospective effects observed contradict the predictions of the two previous models. Given these difficulties, the framework of analysis is then extended to three co-present generations. If the study of aid to children and parents confirms the limits of altruism and egoistic intertemporal exchange, the data also reveal the intervention of several generations endowed with their own decision-making power in the redistributive process. This autonomy of each generation is legitimized in a dynamic analysis of transfers where each generation is successively donor and recipient. This consecution of solidarities defines a prospective and retrospective indirect reciprocity with a reproduction of the gift for the benefit of others. The empirical study confirms this intervention of a third party in the exchange with a transmission of transfer behavior between successive generations.