I30 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: GeneralReturn

This study surveys the conventional methods and their limitations in assessing motives for private transfers. Based on the concept of "effective altruism" - a genuine altruist offers help instead of demanding, this study proposes a normative and discriminative strategy to help distinguish the transfer motives, focusing on whether income transfer persists over time. Its application to Chinese interfamily transfers reveals that altruistic motives do exist but play an insignificant role at the aggregate level.