Future Directions for the Demography of Aging Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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6 Demography of Aging and the Family - Emily M. Agree
6 Demography of Aging and the Family - Emily M. Agree
Pages 159-186
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From page 159... ...
Demographers have developed and refined macro imulation and s microsimulation approaches to family change that enable the projection of distributions of family types for policy and planning purposes. This chapter reviews the ways in which population aging has contributed to an increasingly complex set of family relationships in later life and 1 Johns Hopkins University.
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From page 160... ...
Increases in life expectancy allow for more years spent in family roles as a spouse, sibling, or parent but also for the possibility of occupying many family roles throughout one's lifetime -- either concurrently or in succession -- through divorce, remarriage, migration, changing living arrangements, and the acquisition and loss of other family relationships. As Bengtson (2001)
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From page 161... ...
However, as women's roles evolved over the latter part of the last c entury, lower fertility intentions became more common and achievable, leading to declining family sizes. The mothers of the Baby Boom averaged 3.1 children ever born, and 36 percent had 4 or more children, whereas those born in the late 1960s averaged 1.9 children and only 11.6 percent had families of 4 or more.
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From page 162... ...
As more effective birth control became available, gender roles more fluid, and family responsibilities more volitional, alternatives to lifelong marriage commitments such as divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation became acceptable. Divorce rates began to rise, reaching a peak around 1980, and cohabitation in place of marriage became more common, first for those formerly married and then as a prelude or a substitute among those who had not yet married (Cherlin, 2010)
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Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, March and Annual Social and Economic Supplements. older doubled between 1990 and 2010 (Brown and Lin, 2012)
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Current Population Survey.
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. One of the key contributions of demographic studies of aging and families is the study of cohort succession and its influence on family relationships.
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As future cohorts age, we can expect to see not only more variation in family structures but also redefined relationships among family members. Survival, Marriage, and Childbearing Create More Diverse Families Demographers have shown that increased longevity, lower and later fertility, and serial marriage and partnership yield more-diverse networks of late-life family relationships than in the past.
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From page 167... ...
surveys of aging now provide substantial longitudinal information about family location and characteristics, with especially detailed data on adult children. It is important to note that though institutionalization rates among the older population are quite low (about 3% for the 65 and older population in the United States)
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From page 168... ...
live with adult children, whereas more men live with other relatives or nonrelatives TABLE 6-2 Living Arrangements of Men and Women, Ages 65 and Older, Living in Households in the Community, United States, 2015 (in percentage) Men Women Living Arrangement Unmarried Married Unmarried Married Alone 67.8 1.0 63.7 0.8 Spouse/Partner Only -- 79.5 -- 82.2 Children and Others 16.4 14.8 27.6 13.4 Others Only 15.8 4.7 8.7 3.6 SOURCE: National Health and Aging Trends Study, weighted tabulations.
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From page 169... ...
. Older immigrants in the United States are also far more likely to live in multigenerational households as a result of family reconstitution policies that allowed older family members to immigrate to join adult children and grandchildren (van Hook and Glick, 2007)
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. These levels of close proximity are borne out in studies from the adult children's perspective.
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(2013) showed that adult children were more likely than their parents to make a proximity-enhancing move, especially in response to a parent's illness or their own economic needs.
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Financial support generally flows downward across generations until quite late in life, and parents are highly responsive to adult children's needs for financial assistance (Schoeni, 1997; McGarry, 2016)
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COMPLEX FAMILIES AND LATER-LIFE SUPPORT Union formation and dissolution and childbearing occur at younger ages and affect late-life families through complex marital and fertility histories that create large, diffuse sets of kin relationships with ill-defined norms about support. Concerns persist that the rising numbers of nontraditional family relationships will contribute to a deterioration in family support for older persons and jeopardize the well-being of future cohorts as they age.
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. Divorced fathers are particularly vulnerable; they co-reside with adult children less often and receive fewer hours of informal care from them.
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Both men and women with only stepchildren experienced greater disability and higher mortality than those with biological children alone. Interestingly, stepchildren appear beneficial for older women's health when biological children are present (Pezzin et al., 2013)
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Just as the Baby Boom cohorts were more accepting of divorce earlier in life, they also are more open to cohabiting than earlier generations, and the proportions in these unions are expected to increase (Brown and Wright, 2015)
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From page 177... ...
Having been divorced, number of past unions, and presence of adult children were characteristics positively associated with LAT relationships at older ages in the Netherlands and France (de Jong Gierveld, 2004; de Jong Gierveld and Merz, 2013; RégnierLoilier et al., 2009)
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From page 178... ...
Older adults with a college education are more likely to give financial support to adult children -- probably because they are financially better off -- and children with a college education or more provide greater assistance to aging parents (McGarry and Schoeni, 1995)
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From page 179... ...
While many came to the United States when they were younger, a substantial number are joining adult children through family reunification programs. They face unfamiliar new cultures and language problems, and they are often ignored by younger family members, who are busy and whose lifestyles are often quite different (Treas and Mazumdar, 2002)
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From page 180... ...
More needs to be understood about these differences, but oversampling is rarely done in surveys on aging for minority elders or those in poverty or low income, and studying these families relies on specialized datasets and on small-scale or qualitative research. Demographic changes in families are not only a function of normative social changes but also respond to economic policy and technological change.
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From page 181... ...
. Proximity and Coresidence of Adult Children and their Parents in the United States: Description and Correlates (IZA Discussion Paper #7431)
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. Between elderly parents and adult children: A new look at the intergenerational care provided by the "sandwich generation." Ageing & Society, 26(5)
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. Elderly parents and the geographic availability of their adult children.
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. The spatial separation of parents and their adult children.
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. Living arrangements of mothers and their adult children over the life course.
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From page 186... ...
. Changes in family structure in China: A simulation study.
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