Demographic, economic and social changes are challenging intergenerational care relationships within families. Population ageing has radically increased the demand for elderly care - either formal or informal - in all advanced countries. Despite the consolidation on Long Term Care systems within national welfare state that occurred in the last two decades, evidence suggest that, across OECD countries, family still constitutes the first agency in elderly caring. Additionally, increasing life expectancy and shrinking family size have amplified the individual and family probability to experience bi- and even tri-intergenerational relationships, with the relative bidirectional care responsibilities. Despite the falling birth rate and delayed childbearing, the share of people in three- and four-generation families that can experience caring responsibilities either upward, toward older generations - as parent -, and downward, toward younger generations - as children and grandchildren - is raising in the last decades.
Social transformation, on the other side, indicate that the traditional care model, based on the focal role of women within families, is no longer feasible. Increase in female activity rates and the widespread need for families to secure a dual income have reduced the caring capacity of the family. Welfare support, especially in relation to elderly care, with marked differences across EU countries, account only partially for the bulk of care need, and it is left to the family to compensate for this gap, directly or via market solution, with potential for rising inequalities. In this scenario, the reduction of financial resources generated by the recent economic crisis, and their possible redirection toward the emerging needs of elderly population, are generating new form of recalibration between the state, the market and the family, suggesting a predominant role of the latter.
These demographic and social transformations indicate that a large pressure in terms of caring activities is, and increasingly will be, on the shoulders of the ‘sandwich generation’, who may have care responsibilities towards their (grand)parents and (grand)children at once. In this context, the mismatch between growing care needs and reduced family capacity suggests that families are facing a reorganization of the internal caring mechanisms along the horizontal line, e.g. family members, as well as vertical line, generations.
With a special focus on gender, family forms and care policies, this panel is dedicated to analyze how societal and institutional transformations as well as cultural orientation influence the intergenerational care arrangements within families.
In particular, the stream is addressed to understand:
- How caring resources are shared between family members when multiple generations are in place, especially in relation to conflicting care demands.
- How welfare state arrangements, care and family policy address the multigenerational care demands
- To which extent intergenerational care is outsourced or combined with informal (work) care arrangements
- How intergenerational care reflects on inter-individuals and inter-household inequalities
To this end the stream encourages comparative studies with socio-economic and demographic approaches, studies on gender and care arrangements, studies on family and care policies. We welcome more general comparative contribution and in-depth empirical, single case study or country comparison.
Stream convenors
Tiziana Nazio, University of Turin and Collegio Carlo Alberto, tiziana.nazio@unito.it
Matteo Luppi, Collegio Carlo Alberto, matteo.luppi@carloalberto.org