Abstract: The traditional Chinese family has long been characterized as patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal, placing women at a severe social disadvantage in relation to men. Under such a system, sons were permanent members of the natal family and were expected to live with parents after marriage and contribute to their economic wellbeing. In contrast, daughters were temporary members of the natal family. Upon marriage, a woman was expected to serve her husband's extended family and bore no filial obligation to her own parents. Nevertheless, in recent years some studies have found that the tradition of sons as the sole provider for aging parents has undergone significant changes in contemporary China. To further investigate this issue, our study examines two aspects of intergenerational support: financial support and aging care, and highlights the gender difference between sons and daughters in this regard. Taking into consideration of the commonly practiced patrilocal living arrangement in China, we separate the gender difference between sons and daughters in care behaviors from the gender difference caused by living arrangement. The gender comparison data in this study is drawn from within the same family. China Family Panel Study (2010) provides the database for our analysis. Our finding indicates that sons still play a significantly greater role than daughters in providing support for their aging parents, however, this is only largely due to the fact that sons are most likely to live with or live in close proximity to their parents. If the variable of living arrangement is included, sons play a leading role in providing financial support but lag behind daughters in providing aging care. Discrepancy also exists between rural and urban families. While in rural China, it is still true that “sons give money and daughters provide care”; in cities, daughters have already outperformed sons in both aspects of financial support and aging care. Therefore, even though the Chinese tradition of relying on sons as the core provider of intergenerational support is still alive, significant changes have already occurred. Our study suggests that the rapid demographic transition and the improvement of socioeconomic status of women are the two primary contributors to such changes.

Key words:  gender comparison , socio-economic status
, patrilineal family system , aging care