Presencial: Sala Àngels Torrents, CED

Virtual: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7905645674
Codi: 1984

Abstract
Population ageing put strain on public welfare institutions, and we see tendencies of re- familization also in countries with a universal welfare regime and increasing responsibility of adult children for the caring of older people. Further, cross-national studies found the most extensive intergenerational distances and least contacts in Scandinavian countries. Thus, refamilzation in combination with dispersed family networks may cause increasing loneliness and insufficient care of older people and add to processes of cumulative disadvantage. A key question is therefore, to what extent older people’s geographic proximity to adult children is increasing in the short and long term and how it intersects with socio-economic position, gender, and region type.
Previous studies on intergenerational distances have mostly been cross-sectional and few have explored the long-term trends, across sociodemographic groups, gender and regions. By use of annual register data for Sweden, this study examined how the average distance to the nearest child changed from 1990 to 2019, at age 80 and 65, across socioeconomic groups, gender, and regions. We found no indication of a long-term trend, but substantial short-term variation across cohorts and longer distances for fathers, high income owners, the well-educated and residents in regions with a sparse and older population.