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Education, Work, and Life ChancesDemographic Development, Social Change, and Social Capital

Education, Work, and Life Chances






Research Professorship
Demographic Development, Social Change, and Social Capital


 
 Population ageing concerns both societies and families, both macro and micro structures and dynamics. Trends are similar across developed countries, but their timing and pace differs, due to different ages at first birth, life expectancy and so forth, in the past as well as at present. This in turn originates different age structure patterns as well as a different length and density of intergenerational chains in the various countries – now and in the near future - contributing to cross country differentiation..

There is a general disjuncture in research and policies between the focus on “social generations” defined as cohorts or age groups, and family generations as related descendents. This partial recognition of the impacts of ageing results in simplistic theories about intergenerational conflict and about weakening family solidarities in increasing individualised societies.

Understanding how ageing impacts on the intergenerational experience at the family level and how generations interact in families may help us also to understand how intergenerational issues in society (such as pension systems, labour market structure, or health care reforms) are perceived by individuals in a given society. Conversely, understanding how social institutions construct both age and intergenerational rights and responsibilities may help also to understand how specific patterns of intergenerational relations emerge and what their impact is on the life chances of all those involved.
Population ageing and intergenerational relations, therefore, are at the crossroad of different disciplines and research fields: demography, sociology of the family, sociology of age and the life course, sociology of gender, social stratification, welfare state research, labour market research.

The research program at present is developing in the following directions:

n How demographic changes shape intergenerational solidarity, well-being, and social integration:
       A multilinks framework – MULTILINKS

¬MULTILINKS is an EU-FP7 project coordinated by Pearl Dykstra at ¬The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), Utrecht, the Netherlands. It started in March 2008. It aims at investigating how changing social contexts, from macro-societal to micro-interpersonal, affect social integration, well-being and intergenerational solidarity across different European nations. Its approach builds from three key premises. First, ageing affects all age groups: the young, the middle-aged, and the old. Second, there are critical interdependencies between family generations and between men and women. Third, different analytical levels must be distinguished: the individual, dyad (parent-child, partners), family, region, historical generation, and country.
The WZB unit is responsible for the reconstruction of the institutional framework of intergenerational relationships, with an attention for their gender specificity. Therefore it is involved in (a) reviewing the existing policy literature and data both from Western European countries and from CEE countries, charting and evaluating cross-national similarities and differences, and integrating findings that remain often separate in their own specialized fields; (b) developing indicators of  “intergenerational regimes”  that can be used cross-nationally, both for purposes of measurement and conceptual refinement of existing welfare typologies; (c) constructing a data basis.
The first report of this unit, where the theoretical approach is developed, the existing literature and data sources are presented and discussed, the indicators to be collected described, is available in the following > PDF document.

n  Intergenerational relationships in families and society

This strand of research is developed in conjunction with a research group within the European network of excellence ¬EQUALSOC. An edited book as well as chapters for various books and journal articles have been already published. At present the professor-ship is involved in the study of the impact of dependency in old age on social inequalities in the children’s generation and in work-caring conciliation problems arising in the second half of working life when there are caring demands from the older generation.
Together with other members of EQUALSOC, the group has also produced an
> inventory of comparative data sources for the study of intergenerational relations.


n  Working and Caring in Europe. Working women facing the dependency of their frail elderly parents.

This project is part of a larger project on Working and Caring in Europe, funded by the French Ministry of Labour (MIRE) and coordinated by the Ecole nationale de la santé publique (ENSP) at Rennes. The aim is to explore how middle aged women in different working situations and their families deal with the demands of care coming from their frail elderly parents and parents in law in European countries having different institutional frameworks with regard to caring services for the frail elderly. The WZB
research group is responsible for the German case and has so far published a WZB discussion paper SP I 2009-401.     
>  PDF download

  
>  Professor Chiara Saraceno


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