Does the Completeness of a Household-Based Convoy Matter in Intergenerational Support Exchanges?

Abstract

Based on the closeness of kinship relationships, a 4-layer household-based convoy is proposed for the study of intergenerational support exchanges. It first separates co-residing family members from non-coresiding family members with whom they have frequent contact and places them in the innermost and next-innermost circles of an individual’s convoy structure, respectively. Relatives and friends with whom there is frequent contact are then added as the third and outer-most circles. In principle, it is ideal to have a full four layers. However, in reality, most people miss one or more layers during the different stages of the life cycle. A probability sample with 1979 cases is used to investigate the effect of convoy incompleteness on intergenerational support exchanges. The research findings show that missing any one layer and missing both the third and fourth layers do not result in a significantly negative effect on the mean types of support exchanged. When individual types of support are examined one by one, the convoy structure works similarly but selectively. It works best for types of support involving more labor costs, less for those involving financial support, and least for those involving advice. In addition, it is noted that a multiple exchange strategy is used in intergenerational support exchanges.