Examining the effects of children’s education and their geographical location on parents’ health in Europe

Albert Sabater, University of St Andrews
Benedetta Pongiglione, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

The role of adult children in the provision of care and informal support for their elderly parents remains fundamental in today’s ageing societies despite family members are less likely to co-reside or to live in close proximity than in the past. While support from adult children to elderly parents is partially rooted in family experiences and sociocultural attitudes towards family support, we still know too little about some important aspects of intergenerational support such as the effects of children’s education on parents' health. The aim of this paper is to try to shed some light on this complex relationship in the European setting on the ground of the existing evidence for other geographical regions. In doing so, we provide evidence on whether highly-educated children affect elderly parents’ health positively, after controlling for potential confounding variables. In addition, we assess the effect of health-knowledge from highly-educated children to parents by including specific information on their geographical location. For this purpose, we use data from the Survey on Health, Age and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Preliminary results signal that elderly parents clearly benefit from their adult children’s education and such effect is also found after controlling for potential confounding variables as well as co-residence and geographical proximity between highly-educated adult children and their elderly parents.