Extended Families in Mexico and the United States

This paper uses extensive information on non-co-resident family members, and variation in the spatial dispersion among them, to study the extent to which Mexican families share resources across households and test different... [ view full abstract ]

This paper uses extensive information on non-co-resident family members, and variation in the spatial dispersion among them, to study the extent to which Mexican families share resources across households and test different models of family behavior. We extend previous work by explicitly looking at families with different degrees of spatial dispersion among their members, including families with members spread across international borders. We adapt the collective model developed in the intra-household literature to model the family decision problem, and we analyze family behavior with respect to two sets of outcomes: household budget shares and child human capital indicators. The results suggest that the combination of looking at different degrees of spatial dispersion within families and different dimensions of family behavior is crucial to a precise understanding of inter-household decision-making.