Living arrangements and family support of older people

In Brazil, the proportion of elderly living with their offspring has increased steadily over the last decades. At the same time, the Social Security System has become almost universal, allowing most elderly to receive social benefits in the form of cash transfers. Accordingly, total net public transfers to the elderly exceeded net public transfers to children by more than fivefold in 2002. Not surprising, many children and adults rely on elderly income, but we still do not know who they are. This study benefits from using the methodology developed by the National transfers Account (NTA) project to examine the main demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of household members who cohabitate with elderly in Brazil. We distinguish five living arrangements and households where the elderly have a surplus (disposable income greater than current private consumption). We are particularly interest to look at the characteristics of families and individuals who life with elderly “net givers”.

This paper will focus on care provided by adult children to elderly parents only. Its main aim is to study effects of the quality of relationships between parents and adult children on the likelihood of care transfers. Attitudes towards responsibilities of elder care and their influence on a probability of care provision are also to be accounted for. We presume that the quality of relationships between parents in need and their adult children and supportive attitudes may be good predictors for care transfers. The contextual background is reflected by an appropriate selection of European countries to be studied.
The data come from the Generations and Gender Survey carried out in selected European countries. The countries representing different care regimes and living arrangements of the elderly are to be selected (i.e. Poland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Romania, Germany, Estonia). The logistic regression models with the dependent binary variable of giving/receiving care will be applied. The models include not only the basic socio-demographic and economic characteristics of givers and receivers of care, but also a spatial proximity and a frequency of contacts between parents and children. Moreover, the quality of relationship as well as opinions on filial obligations are included in the models.

Few studies have focused on intergenerational transfers from older women to their adult children during emergencies such as marriage formation and dissolution. There is limited documentation about the support of older women to their daughters during and after marriage crises.
In this paper, our objective is to provide evidence of the role of older women as safety nets for younger women during and after marriage crises by drawing from 8 case studies of older persons’ households in-depth interviews from western, central and eastern Uganda. In addition, key informant interviews are used to substantiate the findings of household in-depth interviews.
Our findings are that older women still play a vital role of caring for children born out of wedlock when their daughters get married; provide financial support, material and emotional support to their daughters during and after marriage crises. Further research is needed to ascertain the changes in intergenerational solidarity in the context of time and marriage dynamics.

We examined the economic wellbeing of the Korean elderly and their reliance on public and private transfers. Under-developed public transfer programs are at the center of heated political debates, and better understanding of economic wellbeing and the relation between public and private transfers will provide further insights in evaluating policy reform proposals under consideration. Using panel data from three waves of Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), we found that the elderly poverty rate between 2006 and 2008 decreased significantly but was still significantly higher than other OECD countries. This poverty reduction did not benefit individuals who were older, less educated, living alone, living in rural areas, or in poor health. We found that low income elderly who co-reside depend almost completely on the income of their children or other household members. Public transfers account for no more than a third of income for low-income elderly, while private transfers accounted for half.

Chinese society is experiencing a stage of rapid aging. Compared with the young elderly, the older and the oldest elderly care have a greater need in daily life, their care needs mainly by family members. For sick or disabled elderly, long-term care/nursing will cause higher demand for the expenditure of caregiver’s time, physical, economic and psychological undertaking. If not to be supported from outside the family, it will cause two aspects of the problem for a care provider and the care receiver. For younger care givers, too much family care burden might affect their quality of life and career. Under the situation of women being caregivers, it is in particularly disadvantaged for women’s development. For older caregivers, they are already older, care may be limited to the elderly, so as to reduce the quality of care. Therefore, understanding the characters of the caregivers groups, is helpful for formulating family support policies.

This article will use the 2010 national survey on Chinese womem’s social status survey data and apply multivariate statistical methods to describe and analyze the demographic characteristics of family caregivers, estimate the burden of caregivers of different features, discussion the related family support policy implications.

As part of a research program that examines family and life course factors that increase the vulnerability and resilience of individuals, this study focuses on unattached men and women at mid-life aged 45 to 64. Using the Censuses, we examine the trends in men and women living alone, and their poverty level since 1991. With data from the 2006 General Social Survey, we then examine the economic and social well-being at mid-life and the differentials by gender, marital status and union trajectories. Salient differences include: while the proportions of separated and divorced men and women are almost equal, women are more likely to be widowed and men are more likely to have never married; both the separated men and women are the least likely to be satisfied with life; in contrast, widows are more satisfied with life than widowers, possibly because widows report more relatives they could turn to; separated and divorced men are more likely to be in a better financial position, whereas never married women are more likely to be so than their separated and divorced counterparts.

Health status and mortality risks differ by type of living arrangement. Living as a married couple has a protective effect, whereas living alone is often associated with poorer health and higher mortality. Mortality is higher still for those living in institutions. However, given that those living in institutions are generally in poorer health than those living independently, it is unclear whether this higher mortality risk among the institutionalized population results from their poorer health, or from other causes. We use an exhaustive Belgian data set of 1.7 million persons aged 65 and above from the 2001 census, and model their survival during year 2002 using logistic regression and controlling for age, sex and education. The results confirm that living with a spouse is associated to the lowest mortality risk but survival for both is improved when the husband is older than the wife. Other types of family-household living arrangements are less favourable, while living alone is better for women than it is for men. Those living in institutions have a higher risk of mortality than those living in private households, irrespective of their health status. However this disadvantage declines with age, and effectively disappears after age 90.

The aging population in Korea is very quickly increasing, which is unprecedented in human history. In order to know the impact of aging on the housing demand, therefore, we analyze the micro data of the Korean census. Focusing on the population aging, the results are the following: First, the homeownership rate by elderly households decreased from 78.1% in 1995 to 74.8% in 2010. Second, the living rate in multiple household, such as an apartment, increased. Moreover, the rate of elderly households under minimum housing standards rapidly decreased from 64.8% in 1995 to 15.3% in 2010.

Population aging is a challenge that will eventually affect most countries. Canada, in particular, is facing a faster population aging than any European country (Gaymu et al., CJA 2010). This is means that the number of Canadian elderly with disability and the number of elderly needing assistance will also increase more rapidly. In a context of limited resources, Canada might have to take benefit of the informal network to take care of all those elderly people.

In this paper, we use LifePaths, a microsimulation model developed at Statistics Canada, to improve our previous efforts in projecting the potential family network. To do this research, we modified the model presented in a demographic theory of kinship (Keyfitz and Caswell, 2005) for taking into account a longitudinal component and add the number of surviving siblings to the information that we already have on surviving spouse and children. It is also important to note that this new model can be use with any set of fertility and mortality rate for any country.

Widowhood is one of the most stressful life events, resulting in declines in psychological wellbeing and increases in mortality risks. Although the consequences of widowhood on mortality and psychological wellbeing are well-documented, little is known about the impact of widowhood on physical health. We assess how widowhood influences physical wellbeing and identify the mechanisms underlying the relationship between widowhood and functional health. Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), we employ ordinary least square models to (1) compare the functional health of married and widowed persons and (2) examine the extent to which socioeconomic circumstances, relationship quality, and availability of social support explains the health differentials between them. Widowed persons have worse functional health than their married counterparts, net of demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, marital quality, and availability of other forms of social support. The worse functional health of widowed persons is largely attributable to the fact that they are more likely to be in low quality marriages and to have cared for an ailing spouse prior to their death.