Social policies and intergenerational support in Italy and South Korea

Ginevra Floridi

doi:10.1080/21582041.2018.1448942

Ginevra Floridi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2018.1448942

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Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores the interactions between social policies and exchanges of support between parents aged 50 and over and their adult children in Italy and South Korea. In both countries, families are predominantly responsible for financial and care support to dependent members. However, in the mid-2010s, social security systems, labour market arrangements and family policies allocated resources between age groups in different proportions, favouring pensioners in Italy and prime-age workers in South Korea. Arguably, this difference may influence and interact with exchanges of support within families. Harmonised data for 2012–2013 from surveys of ageing are used to compare exchanges of financial support, instrumental care and intergenerational co-residence between parents aged 50 and above and their adult children. In Italy, where societal transfers favour older generations, intergenerational transfers from parents to children are large, and children provide complementary forms of help to ageing parents. In South Korea, where later-life protection is limited, parents are more heavily dependent upon adult children for financial and care support. The findings add to the existing literature on the relationship between societal and family transfers in European welfare regimes by exploring these interactions in broader contexts and policy areas.

Highlights

This article explores the interactions between social policies and exchanges of support between parents aged 50 and above and their adult children in Italy and South Korea in 2012–2013
Intergenerational support is a timely issue to investigate in countries with ageing populations and a high degree of interdependence among family members such as Italy and Korea
As the description of social policies and labour markets in the two countries reveals, in 2012–2013 societal transfers allocated financial resources and services in opposite proportions between generations, favouring those born before the 1960s in Italy and younger generations in Korea

Summary

Introduction

This article explores the interactions between social policies and exchanges of support between parents aged 50 and above and their adult children in Italy and South Korea ( referred to as ‘Korea’) in 2012–2013. By the mid-2010s, both countries had rapidly ageing societies in which family members relied heavily upon one another in responding to financial and care needs, but in which social policies allocated resources in different proportions to older and younger generations, favouring those born before the 1960s in Italy and those born after that period in Korea. The choice of age 50 as the cut-off for the definition of middle-aged and older people makes it possible to study intergenerational support among Italian and Korean parents born before (or around) 1960 These groups are interesting to compare because in Italy they benefitted from generous societal transfers, but in Korea they were relatively disadvantaged. The associations suggest that, while in Italy co-residence mainly benefitted adult children who had not established their independence from the parental home through marriage and/or employment, in Korea it was a response to the needs of older and widowed parents

Conclusion

Findings

Notes on contributor