Changes in Parents’ Health and Their Proximity to Adult Children in Europe

Sanny Boy Afable , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Yana Catherine Vierboom, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Megan Evans, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Mikko Myrskyla, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Hill Kulu, University of St Andrews

Adult children are an ever-important source of support for ageing parents. There is, however, a need to clarify the extent to which parental health influences the distance between parents and their children. How, if at all, does the decline in parental health influence children and parents to move closer to one another? We seek to answer this question by using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a cross-national panel survey of older adults aged 50+ from more than 20 countries in Europe. Using regular SHARE waves from 2004-2015, we use discrete-time event history analysis to examine the relationship between the type of proximity-enhancing moves and parental health status and health decline, including experience of health shocks, physical frailty, and self-perceived health, all while controlling for the parents and nearest children’s characteristics. We perform a similar analysis on any proximity-enhancing moves in each of the four European regions: Northern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Western Europe. In general, our findings suggest that it is mostly the parents who move in with or closer to their children in response to rapid health decline, while children may move in with their parents because of the latter’s already poor health. The association between health decline and proximity-enhancing moves is also mostly confined to Southern Europe, a region marked by strong family ties. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of rapid population ageing and intergenerational solidarity in Europe.

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 Presented in Session 68. Ageing, Distance and Care