TIES THAT BIND--FAMILY STRUCTURE, SOCIAL SUPPORT & AGING

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DESCRIPTION (adapted from the applicant's abstract): This study will analyze the importance of marital history and kin network characteristics to social support among the elderly using the first round of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH1) and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), including family information from the first and 1975 rounds. This study is motivated by concerns about the future impact of the increasing proportionate elderly share of the U.S. population and the likely changes to intergenerational public transfer program. Currently family networks provide important support to the elderly, and there may be increased expectations among policy makers that they will do even more in the future. Recent research suggests increasing diversity of future elderly kin networks, resulting from greater variation in marital and fertility experiences. The greater diversity of ties implies a change in the quality of those ties. It is the purpose of this study to examine the quality of kinship ties with regards to elderly social support. There are four objectives in this R03 pilot project. The first objective is an analysis of potential social support from the perspective of the elderly parent, taking into account the availability of adult children and distinguishing between step and biological children. The second objective is an analysis of care giving and emotional support to elderly parents from the perspective of the adult child, taking into account the parent's marital disruptions while the child was growing up, whether or not the adult child's relationship to the parent is step or biological, and controlling for sibling size and composition. The third objective is an examination of how elderly social support varies by gender, race and class. Finally, the fourth objective of the R03 pilot project is to provide the groundwork for the preparation of a future R01 application. The future application will propose applying the initial analyses to other data (NSFH2 and the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS)). In addition, the results from all the micro data analyses will be used to inform macro forecasts about the needs of the elderly and the variation in their potential kin networks in the years 2010-2040.