Isabelle Van Pevenage

Biographies and family solidarity in Québec

In Québec, the 2004 survey Biographies et solidarités familiales (‘biographies and family solidarity in Québec’) was the first quantitative survey to deal with the question of the diverse forms of family solidarity as they have changed over time and in line with modifications in family, work, and public policies. Our purpose here is to present the survey itself along with a certain number of its results. The latter bear, on the one hand, on what we have termed Québec ‘family solidarity spaces’, referring by that to the structural data previous to forms of solidarity as we know them now and, on the other hand, on the changes in the provision of early childhood care over three generations.

Three competing interpretations of policy problems: tame and wicked problems through the lenses of population aging

Abstract This contribution presents competing lenses of population aging as policy problems and it compares their impact on the treatment of policy problems. Three lenses are analysed: intergenerational, biomedical and social gerontological. The intergenerational lens treats population aging as a new form of class conflict along age groups. The social gerontological lens claims that population aging is first and foremost a social issue and it stands in opposition to the dominance of biomedical approaches that treat aging as a pathology. The presence of these three alternative conceptions of the policy problem is indicative of the complexity surrounding population aging and the importance of having divergent definitions of policy problems. Via an analysis of informal care giving in the Canadian context, this contribution also presents a comparison of the three lenses with a focus on the roots of these conceptualisations in various disciplines, their prevalence in various public organisations, and the policy consequences of their strength or weakness.