Intergenerational relationships in contemporary UK

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Family and kinship have been of long-standing interest to social scientists and form the backdrop for the design of many policies, including social security, pensions, child care and personal care for the elderly. Our focus is on the relationships between parents and their adult children, how intergenerational contact and help respond to needs and resources of both generations, and how contact and help affect people's well being. The research would contribute to the ESRC's strategic priority of 'influencing behaviour and informing interventions'.Past research on intergenerational relationships includes the important tradition of the community studies of the 1950s and 1960s, a number of studies based on small local or regional samples and recent research on large nationally representative samples. But nearly all of these studies are cross-sectional in nature, which limits their ability to address issues of causality. In contrast, our research analyses longitudinal data (i.e. repeated observations of the same people). In particular, it uses the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), Understanding Society and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Each of these supports our investigation in different ways. The BHPS is a mature panel study, having interviewed people since 1991, and its sample is now incorporated in Understanding Society. It interviews people from both sides the intergenerational exchange (although parents and adult children are not matched to one another). Understanding Society has a very large sample, with about 80,000 individuals in each wave, but it only started in 2009. It will allow us to explore differences in intergenerational relationships for small social groups like ethnic minorities (who are over-sampled) and single parents. ELSA is a panel study of the over-50s which started in 2002. It currently offers a four-year panel and has excellent measures of health, wealth and income, but it interviews the parent generation only. All three panel studies contain measures of intergenerational support and contact, but to different degrees.We are interested in the help that parents and adult children give to one another. Because the frequency of contact between them is valued in itself, particularly by parents, it is another focus of our research. In addition, both help and contact are constrained by geographical distance. Our research would estimate the impacts of the needs and resources of parents and their adult children on: (1) how far apart they live from one another; (2) how often they are in contact with one another; (3) how much and what kinds of help and support they give each other. It also investigates how proximity, contact and help are related to each other. The important final component of our research gauges how contact and help affect the well-being of parents and their adult children.The research would use a range of quantitative methods which aim to exploit the longitudinal data that we have in the best ways. These include latent class models to establish the underlying structure of intergenerational exchange; instrumental variables to address issues of causality; fixed effects models to account for persistent unobserved differences between individuals; and structural equation models to explore the links between proximity, contact, help and well being. Some of these methods require longitudinal data, others can be applied with greater confidence when such data is available.We expect to publish the findings as 4-5 articles in leading academic journals. In addition, the research would form the foundation for a research monograph with a major University Press. Of equal importance, we plan to have regular meetings with key stakeholders such as AgeUK to inform our research design and questions, set research priorities, and to discuss our findings.