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Between Elderly Parents and Grandchildren—Geographic Proximity and Trends in Four-Generation Families

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Abstract

In an ageing society, families may have an important role in the caretaking and well-being of the elderly. Demographic changes have an impact on the size and structure of families; one aspect is how intergenerational support is distributed when there is a need for support to both older and younger generations at the same time. Another vital aspect of the provision of care for the elderly is geographic proximity. This study is oriented towards the potential “both-end carers” i.e. persons who have grandchildren in potential need of care while still having living ageing parents. The incidence of having grandchildren and having living parents at age 55 and the proximity between generations is described using Swedish register data. The results show that the share of 55-year-olds who are grandparents decreased dramatically from 70% to 35% between 1990 and 2005. As expected, more 55-year-olds have living parents—a proportion that increased from 37% to 47% during this period. As a result of delayed childbearing among the children of these cohorts, the likelihood of belonging to a four-generation family among 55-year-olds has not increased, despite increased longevity. Furthermore, most individuals live within daily reach of their kin and no evidence was found of a trend of increasing geographic distances between generations.

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Notes

  1. The data has a very good coverage and include all legal residents in Sweden, independent of migration status or country of citizenship.

  2. However, for people who migrated to Sweden as adults the data rarely include links to parents, even if the parents are also residents in Sweden.

  3. Fortunately, our data enabled us to make the analysis on one-year age groups, in this way the period effects were not blurred by cohort effects which is the case if for instance 5 year age groups are used. To see if the patterns differed a lot between age groups we made separate analyses also for people aged 58 and found a similar trend of multigenerational structures as for whose aged 55 (see Fig. 3).

  4. The larger share with grandchildren nearby compared to those having parents nearby can be explained by the fact that you have a better chance to have at least one child nearby, since multiple children might live in different locations, while parents are often only in one location.

  5. If we instead of the oldest child had focused on the closest child, we would of course get a better picture of the proximity to potential care-givers and care-takers, but on the other hand we would end up with selection bias when analyzing the influence of various socio-demographic features on the distance between parents and adult children.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ageing and Living Conditions Research Programme, Centre for Population Studies, Umea University, Umea, Sweden

    Emma Lundholm & Gunnar Malmberg

  2. Department of Social and Economic Geography, Umea University, Umea, Sweden

    Emma Lundholm & Gunnar Malmberg

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  1. Emma Lundholm
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  2. Gunnar Malmberg
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Correspondence to Emma Lundholm.

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Lundholm, E., Malmberg, G. Between Elderly Parents and Grandchildren—Geographic Proximity and Trends in Four-Generation Families. Population Ageing 2, 121–137 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-010-9022-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-010-9022-4

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