Population ageing and intergenerational relations

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”.

The European Union population will remain the world’s oldest region into the 21st century. According to EUROPOP 2010 projection, the percentage of people in EU27 aged 65+ will increase from 17.4% in 2010 to 29.5% in 2060. However, the pace of ageing will vary across countries. The study will primarily focus on confronting demographic indicators of ageing with investigating the attitudes towards the elderly based on the recent survey on Active Ageing (Special Eurobarometer 378, 2012). The East-West divide observed through demographic indicators of mortality and health is also repeated in attitude patterns. Citizens in former EU15 tend to be more satisfied with their health than those in NMS12 (12 New Member States). People are most likely to set old age lower in Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Germany, etc. General perception of the elderly at age 55 and over is the most positive in Luxembourg, Finland, Cyprus, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium while it is very negative in Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Latvia, Slovakia. Former socialist countries do not show old-age friendly environment despite the fact that currently they still belong among the youngest populations. Therefore, for such countries it will be a significant challenge in the future to cope with the fast population ageing.

The 2009 Population and Housing Census data have indicated that Vietnam is reaching the end of its “demographic transition” marked by three emerging characteristics, i.e. decreasing fertility rates, decreasing mortality rates, and increasing life expectancy. As a result, the percentage of elderly population (aged 60+) increased from 6.9 percent in 1979 to 9 percent in 2009 or 2.12 times in term of absolute number. Vietnam population will enter the aging phase in 2017.
Getting old before getting rich, the elderly population in Vietnam is facing various health issues i.e. changing substantially from communicable diseases to non-communicable and chronic ones; higher treatment cost; poor quality health services to the elderly living in rural, mountainous areas and ethnic minorities as well as low awareness of health risks among elderly themselves. In contrast, insufficient investments have been made to the elderly care system leading to the fact that while life expectancy is increasing, healthy life conditions for the elderly have not been significantly improved.
In response to the aging situation, a policy package needs to be addressed from strengthening healthcare services to health education, better elderly-friendly living environment and public social and community-based assistance.

Research on the effect of rising human capital on the consequences of population aging rarely considers the fact that the elderly population has its own human capital composition achieved through earlier schooling and work experience. Hence, for an elderly population of a fixed size and age-sex composition, the higher its human capital, the higher is the total amount of public pensions to be paid. We construct an old age dependency ratio (OADR) where we assign to each person a number of units corresponding to his/her level of human capital. The dynamics of this human capital-specific OADR is examined using data for Italy. Multistate population methods were utilized for long-term projections to 2107. Under specific conditions, a constant or a moderately increasing human capital may cause aggravation of consequences of population aging rather than their alleviation. We intend to replicate this study for several other European countries where data are available.

The aim is to "explain" the formal social service coverage in Spain. The following research questions are raised: how services meet the needs of older people -are there many who need help but do not get it?- and does that vary from one region to another?
Spain is the only Southern European country with extensive services for older persons, greatly expanded in recent decades but suffering from vast regional variations. We use Spain as an example to describe and analyse regional variation in services and care for elderly people. A strong regional autonomy can lead to large variations in the distribution of social services, which has turned out to be the case
within care of the elderly in Spain. This study analyses these variations and to what extent they respond to or reflect differences in social or physical needs. Cross-national individual data, regionally representative, and geographical information on macro factors such as public spending on services are analysed to map out the variations in old-age care, to study compensating factors in the care system, and to explore the connection with regional demographic and socioeconomic conditions. The main preliminary result is that social factors (living alone) rather than physical needs determine service use, and especially so when coverage rates are low.

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As well known, population ageing process is underway in many developing countries too giving rise to the increase of older population. This demographic development is a cause of concern in many of these countries, particularly in the realm of population management strategies, especially those relating to the quality of human life. In this context, in developing countries, the intergenerational relationship which used to serve as a protection base for older people is reemerging as a salient issue or drawing fresh attention.

Bangladesh as a country falls in the above category. the ageing of population is progressing fast in the country but to protect the interest of these growing number there is no adequate public policies/institutions, while at the same time, there are indications that due to ongoing socio-economic and cultural changes the traditional joint living protecting the welfare of older people are increasingly falling apart. In this context, the present study using national level data tried to assess the concurrent support provisions of older members and understand the changing behaviour of children who so far served as the sole provider to older parents.

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.

This article investigates savings of ethnic minorities in the UK. We use the life-cycle model and data from the Family Resources Survey to analyse the saving profiles of ethnic minorities by gender and age cohorts. Socio-economic variables are used to better understand saving patterns of ethnic minorities.
We apply the life-cycle model to the different ethnic groups and find significant heterogeneity between and within groups in terms of socio-economic characteristics and saving accumulation during the working life and in retirement. While Indian respondents show saving patterns similar to the white population (our control group), Bangladeshi and Pakistani respondents experience a significant disadvantage in terms of employment and savings.
Gender and ethnicity are important determinants of financial well-being. Bangladeshi women exhibit the greatest financial difficulties amongst all groups examined, often as consequence of low full time employment rates and incomes. For all ethnic groups education is a crucial factor in determining saving behaviour.
The importance of our results lies in determining whether the risk of poverty in retirement is significantly higher for ethnic minority groups and in assessing specific socio-economic and cultural reasons leading many to poverty in later life.

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.