An old relative at home: a burden or an asset for the Italian mid-life generation? An analysis with the Time Use Survey

Marina Zannella, Vienna Institute of Demography
Maria-Letizia Tanturri, Università di Padova

Intergenerational co-residence is among the strategies that can be adopted to organize support and care, especially in societies characterized by strong family ties as Italy. This paper is aimed to evaluate whether an older family component at adult children’ home is a burden in terms of time transfers or rather a beneficial source of help, according to the different characteristics of the older component (age, sex, health condition) and to the family typologies (number and age of children). Using the most recent Time use survey available for Italy (2008-09), we analyze how the use of time of mid-life couples men and women is effected by either the presence of children and/or of an older member in multi-generational households, following both an intergenerational and gender perspective. Preliminary results indicates as the presence of an old relative does not significantly affect the time devoted by women and men to unpaid work on the whole, but only increases the time dedicated to care of adult member. Further analysis will allow: 1) to estimate the effect of the old component in specific family typologies (e.g. with pre-school children); 2) to evaluate whether the impact changes according to the old men characteristics and in relation to specific activities; 3) to estimate the effect on leisure time and paid work.