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 home-ownership, and attending college) increased the probability and amount of parental financial transfers; yet there were no differences in their effects by socio-economic background.

社会科学奖学金已确定，具有较高社会经济地位的父母对子女进行了更多的投资，导致了子女结业方面的不平等。然而，我们对这些父母在成年后是否继续利用其后代的优势知之甚少。在本文中，我们使用一种生命过程方法来理论化父母在儿童成年生活过程中进行财务转移的动态，以及这些变化可能因社会经济背景而有所不同。然后，我们利用高质量的澳大利亚调查数据（《澳大利亚家庭，收入和劳动力动态调查2001–2018；n= 108,905个观测值和18,611个个体）和用于面板数据的广义结构方程模型，以测试理论预测。我们发现，来自社会经济背景较高的成年子女比来自社会经济背景较低的成年子女获得了更多的转移和更多的收入，其中差异在成年后最为明显。重要的是，这些差异出现在针对一系列变量进行调整的模型中，这些变量反映了成年子女的社会经济状况，包括其收入水平。进一步的分析表明，成年子女的人生历程和过渡（例如结婚，进入房屋所有权和上大学）增加了父母进行财政转移的可能性和金额。但是，受社会经济背景的影响没有差异。