DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will develop new methods for measuring aggregate intergenerational transfers; construct historical estimates and projections of intergenerational transfers in varying social, economic, and policy contexts; analyze the inter-relationships between public policy, familial support systems, and economic conditions; and analyze the macroeconomic and generational effects of public policy. The new National Transfer Account system will represent a significant advance because it measures both familial and public transfers, and because of its historical and international scope. These new data will be used to study the implications of population aging for both familial and public transfers, how changes in familial support systems are influencing the economic circumstances of different generations, the interaction between public and familial transfer systems, and the macroeconomic and generational effects of changes in public policy with regard to pensions, health care, and education. An international team is drawn from the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The accounts will be estimated for seven economies, the U.S., France, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia, with sufficient historical depth to analyze long-run changes in public policy, economic conditions, and family support systems. The broad historical and cross-cultural perspective will provide important new insights about alternative strategies for redistributing resources across generations. Parallel proposals with identical text, to be reviewed together, have been submitted by Lee at UC Berkeley and Mason at the East West Center in Hawaii.