Altruism Within the Family: A Comparison of Father and Mother Using Life Happiness and Life Satisfaction

Studies on intra-household allocation of resources show that exogenous increase in mothers’ income has larger effect on children’s outcomes than the same increase in fathers’ income, suggesting gender differences may exist in parents’ altruism towards their children. Using self-reported life happiness and life satisfaction, we investigate the differences by gender in mutual altruism between father and child as well as mother and child dyads in Singapore. We found that mutual altruism exists between mother and child, but not between father and child. These findings are robust to the measure of self-reported well-being. Further, we find that gender difference in altruism of fathers and mothers is not driven by the difference in the extent of future old age support desired by fathers and mothers from their children.