In most industrialized countries, more people than ever are having to cope with the burden of
caring for elderly parents. This paper formulates a model to explain how parental care
responsibilities and family structure interact in affecting children's mobility characteristics. A
key insight we obtain is that the mobility of young adults crucially depends on the presence of
a sibling. Our explanation is mainly, but not exclusively, based on a sibling power effect.
Siblings compete in location and employment decisions so as to direct parental care
decisions at later stages towards their preferred outcome. Only children are not exposed to
this kind of competition. This causes an equilibrium in which siblings not only exhibit higher
mobility than only children, but also have better labor market outcomes. Using data from the
German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and from the American National Survey of
Families and Households (NSFH), we find strong evidence that confirms these patterns. The
implications of our results are then discussed in the context of current population trends in
Europe and the United States.
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