Family support for population at age 50 and over in selected European countries

Jolanta Kurkiewicz, Cracow University of Economics
Ewa Soja, Cracow University of Economics
Beata Osiewalska, Cracow University of Economics and Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

The ageing process is typical for the demographic situation in developed countries. It is one of the significant achievements of contemporary societies. It is important to see the ageing as a phenomenon which involves the population as a whole. One of the signs of this are intergenerational transfers. In our work the attention is concentrated on the informal support for the population at age 50 and over. The goal of our study is to investigate the main characteristics of receivers and givers and to determine the kinds and the amount of the involved support. We consider the living arrangements of the receivers as one of the significant determinants of the support. The following groups are distinguished: (1) households composed only of persons aged 50 and over (living alone or with spouse only); (2) multigenerational households where members aged 50+ co-reside with: children (alone or in union), with another relative or with unrelated people. Such grouping enables us to determine the influence of co-residence on receiving different types of informal support. Next we introduce population of givers of different kinds of help, such as activities of daily living and money, considering such covariates as: age, sex, marital status, education, health status, and economic situation. In order to achieve the goal, the descriptive statistics and logistic regression models are used. The data comes from the SHARE survey. As main results we expect to assess: (1) the propensity for independent arrangements among people aged 50 and over in European countries; (2) the importance of co-residence in the context of informal help; (3) the effect of main characteristics of givers on informal support given to people aged 50 and over.