Intergenerational Relations

Political Economies and Intergenerational Relationships

The most common narrative in cross-national comparative studies of intergenerational relations derives from Gøsta Esping-Andersen's political economy theory, which classifies nations by the degree to [Page 923]which care responsibilities are allocated among state, market, and family. In this scheme, nations are ordered on a gradient ranging from social democratic states, in which all citizens are incorporated under a single universal insurance system (e.g., Scandinavian countries), to residualist states, in which citizens will be assisted by the state only after personal resources have been exhausted (e.g., Mediterranean countries), with the middle ground occupied by liberal-market states where assistance is means tested and modest social insurance plans are found (e.g., central Europe and the United States). This division maps well with a series of comparative multinational European studies showing that older parents are more intensely engaged with their adult children—in terms of social contact, geographic proximity, coresidence, and exchanges of support—the more southerly their location is on the European continent, a north-south gradient that progresses from stronger to weaker social policies and public interventions. Explanations for variation have centered on the substitutability of state versus family provisions for impaired older adults. Implicit in these arguments is that stronger welfare states have crowded out children as providers of support and care for their older parents. By this logic, a thought experiment would predict that if the generosity of the welfare state toward older individuals were reduced, adult children would fill the void, a result found by a study in Sweden with regard to publicly financed inhome care during the 1990s.

Research also suggests that welfare state generosity may also crowd-in certain types of intergenerational assistance. One such study found that strong social safety nets for frail and disabled individuals enhance casual and intermittent types of family support to the elderly by lifting the onerous burden of full-time caregiving. In another example of how state interventions may crowd-in intergenerational resource transfers, liberal pension schemes that put money in the hands of older adults have been found to increase financial contributions by older parents to their adult children and grandchildren. In a natural experiment that followed inter-generational giving before and after the reunification of Germany, Martin Kohli showed that upgraded pensions in the former East Germany produced an increase in the amount of money older generations transferred to their adult children.

...