Svein Olav Daatland

Intergenerational solidarity and the family–welfare state balance

The article addresses the strength and character of intergenerational family solidarity under different family cultures and welfare state regimes in order to answer the following two questions: (1) Is intergenerational solidarity stronger under the more collectivist southern family tradition than under the more individualist northern tradition? (2) Is more generous access to social care services a risk or a resource for family care? These questions are explored with data from the OASIS project, a comparative study among the urban populations aged 25+ (n=6,106) in Norway, England, Germany, Spain, and Israel. The findings indicate that the welfare state has not crowded out the family in elder care, but has rather helped the generations establish more independent relationships. Intergenerational solidarity is substantial in both the northern and southern welfare state regimes, and seems to vary in character more than in strength.

Filial norms and family support in a comparative cross-national context: evidence from the OASIS study

The article aims to answer three questions: How strong are the bonds of obligations and expectations between generations? To what extent are different types of support exchanged between generations? What are the impacts of filial norms, opportunity structures and emotional bonds on the exchange of inter-generational support between adult children and older parents across societies? It reports findings from the five-country (Norway, England, Germany, Spain and Israel) OASIS study, which collected data from representative, age-stratified, urban-community samples of about 1,200 respondents in each country. The findings indicate that solidarity is general and considerable although the strengths of its dimensions vary by country. Most respondents acknowledged some degree of filial obligation, although the proportions were higher in Spain and Israel than in the northern countries, and there was greater variation in the tangible forms than in the expressed norms. Adult children were net providers of support, but older parents provided emotional support and financial help. Most support was provided to unmarried older parents with physical-function limitations. The effect of filial norms on help provision by adult children was moderate but significant and variable across the five countries, appearing more prescriptive in the south than in the north, where inter-generational exchanges were more open to negotiation. The findings demonstrate that cross-national analyses provide insights into both country-specific factors and the sometimes unexpected similarities among them.

‘What are Families For?’: On Family Solidarity and Preference for Help

Norwegian elderly people today are clearly more aware of public help and services compared to the late 1960s, and a growing number of them prefer public rather than family help. A study in Oslo found that a majority would turn to the public services when in need of long-term help, even when children were living close by. Children or other informal helpers were preferred over the public services only when there was a need for short-term assistance. The growing preference for public help is taken primarily as a response to increased availability of public services, and not as a reflection of weaker inter-generational solidarity.

Balancing generations: on the strength and character of family norms in the West and East of Europe

ABSTRACT This article explores the strength and character of responsibility norms between older parents and adult children in a European context. Data from the ‘Generations and Gender Survey’ are analysed to compare seven countries from the North West to the South East of Europe: Norway, Germany, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and Georgia. Norm strength is measured as the level of support for filial and parental responsibility norms. Character differences are indicated by how conditional the norms are, and how they are balanced between the younger and older generations. The general findings are in line with the family culture hypothesis – family norms are stronger towards the East and South of the continent, with Norway and Georgia as the extreme cases. National differences are considerable for filial norms, but moderate for parental norms. Parental responsibility is relatively stronger in the North West, filial responsibility in the South East. Family norms have a more open character in the West, where the limits to responsibility are widely recognised. Women are less supportive of family obligations than men. It is suggested that where the welfare state is more developed, it has moderated the demanding character of family obligations and allowed a more independent relationship between the generations to form. The level of support for filial obligation is for these reasons a poor indicator for family cohesion in more developed welfare states.

From variables to lives: Inputs to a fresh agenda for psychological aging research in Norway

Why has aging and old age attracted so little interest in psychology? This article explores the resistance to aging perspectives, and the struggle to have gerontology recognized, in basic disciplines like psychology and sociology. Aging may, in fact, be a most appropriate “laboratory” for research on individual competence and motivation, considering the many stressors and the great diversity in later life. Findings from Norwegian and German studies on age-related changes in personality and intellectual functioning indicate a need to shift the focus from variables to individuals and study the various pathways of psychological aging. What type of trajectories are hidden behind the mean trends? This perspective may help us move beyond the often trivial and technical study of variables into the joys and tragedies of real lives, and can serve as a guideline for a fresh agenda for psychological aging research in Norway.

Diversification of old-age care services for older people: Trade-offs between coverage, diversification and targeting in European countries

Information on public services for older people is often limited to institutional care and Home Help/ Home Care, be it for individuals in surveys, statistics for a specific country or for international comparisons. Yet, these two major services in many countries are supplemented — or substituted — by other, minor services. The latter include services such as transportation services, meals-on-wheels, alarm systems, and day care. In this study the authors use various data sources to provide information on all or most of these types of support for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, England, Spain, and Israel, concluding with a closer scrutiny of Swedish service profiles. When all types of support are considered, service coverage in these countries is approximately 50–100% higher than for the two major types alone. Data suggest some degree of targeting, at least in countries with higher coverage rates for services. Coverage is estimated as a percentage of a specific age group which uses a service. In countries with lower coverage rates, users may demand or get what is available, with little differentiation between client needs. When user rates are high, there is also a greater overlap between family care and public services. In countries with lower coverage rates, family care and public services are more often substituted for each other. It is suggested that a range of services, major and minor, may suit the varying needs of older people more effectively than the choice between nothing, Home Help or institutional care, but minor services also may be used as an inexpensive substitute for full support.

Well-being, Control and Ageing: An Empirical Assessment

Quality of life (QoL) is at the same time a very concrete and elusive concept. It is concrete in the sense that most people have quite clear conceptions about what is not a good life. There is more variation, and less agreement, on what are the positive aspects of life. Among the reasons for this is that we as human beings share some basic needs which disturb us and make us unhappy when they are not met, while we as individuals have personal tastes and preferences which tend to direct our dreams about the good life in different directions. This being said, the convergent images of the negative sides of life, and the more divergent images of the positive will, in reality, interact and be modified by social structures, cultural norms, and shared experiences such as ageing. They do, however, represent contrasting perspectives on what QoL is and how it could be studied: one based on an indirect approach, the other on a more direct one. The first will tend to focus on circumstances that may make a good life possible, while the other will study the good life more directly in the form of subjective well-being or happiness. These two traditions have dominated research in the field. The first originated in economics and focused on living standards in terms of income and material goods (Motel-Klingebiel, 2004). Sociologists added social indicators that were assumed to be important like housing, health, education, and social support (Erikson and Uusitalo, 1987; Ringen, 1995). The common feature is a focus on (more or less) objective circumstances that may enable a good life. This approach is normatively grounded in a conception of well-being as freedom or capability – the ability and power to reach valuable goals (Sen, 1993; Ringen, 1995). It works on the assumption that people are rational and will try to realize what they consider to be good for themselves, which is a reasonable assumption for most people and in most situations, but not without exceptions. The second tradition aims at QoL more directly by simply asking people how they feel (Diener et al., 1999; see also Chapter 2). The subjective well-being approach is primarily an arena for psychologists, but includes also branches of sociology and the health sciences. Among the arguments for this perspective is to accept people’s own perceptions, to avoid paternalism, and to allow a larger range of diversity in the conceptions of a good life. A third line bridges the two by studying how well-being is influenced by living conditions and vice versa. Campbell et al. (1976) have argued that subjective wellbeing is a function of both direct and indirect effects of structural conditions, but typically, the effects of objective living conditions are filtered through subjective

Scandinavian Contrasts and Norwegian Variations in Special Housing for Older People

De-institutionalization is a general trend for Scandinavian long-term care over the last decades. Denmark and Sweden have taken this trend a step further than Norway has, as Denmark suspended institutional care altogether in 1987 and Sweden in 1992. Since then, residential care has been provided to individuals in special housing in various forms. This housing is in principle “independent housing,” where residents are tenants and are provided services according to needs and not sites. This article concentrates on the Norwegian variations to this system, as this is the only country of the 3 that still provides residential care under 2 “regimes,” an institutional care regime and an assisted housing regime. Is assisted housing essentially different from institutional care, or is it better described as old wine in new bottles? The latter may be the case for Sweden, whereas Denmark stands out as having the most housing-oriented care model. Institutional care (i.e., nursing homes) still dominates in Norway, where assisted housing is merely a minor supplement to institutional care in most municipalities. The article explores the reasons for these trends and, in particular, the reasons for the Norwegian resistance to assisted housing as an alternative form of residential care.

The comparative ambition

Clemens Tesch-Romer and Hans-Joachim von Kondratowitz (2006) want us to move comparative ageing research beyond the descriptives that are dominating most of today’s comparative studies to a more theory informed approach. This is an honorable ambition, and they present a good case in their article on ‘Comparative ageing research: a Xourishing Weld in need of theoretical cultivation’. They conclude that it is often unclear what is indeed compared in many cross-national studies, and they illustrate this by pointing out how explicit hypotheses are often lacking while the design and the selection of countries are often not driven by theory. When the start of a project is hesitant, the continuation will be even more so. What we need therefore is a theoretical foundation for comparative ageing research, either by integrating ageing issues into more general comparative theories or by modifying ageing theories to include comparative issues and sound methodologies. Both strategies will do, and the two authors illustrate their points well by suggesting how comparative theories such as the theory of cultural syndromes by Triandis could be expanded to include ageing issues, and how ageing theories such as disengagement theory and socio-emotional selectivity theory could beneWt from explicit comparative perspectives. So far, so good. The authors then suggest four criteria (and steps) for how theory informed comparative ageing research should be carried out: First, research questions should be explicit as to what the project compares. Second, the relevant levels of analysis should be identiWed and described, e.g. how macro level societal structures such as policies or gender roles may inXuence micro level individual behaviour such as retirement or quality of life. Third, mechanisms should be explicitly formulated, and fourth – hypotheses about the similarities and diVerences that are produced through these mechanisms should be guided by theory and formulated a priori. These hypotheses should indeed also guide the selection of countries and how the study is otherwise designed if I read the authors correctly, and this is where the trouble starts. I have no problems with the diagnosis but I am not totally happy with the treatment. The Wrst three criteria are indeed rules of good practice for any study be it comparative or not, but the fourth is a more narrow matter and is in my mind an ideal for variable-oriented comparative research only. Let me return to this point after a short detour. Comparative studies are often driven by one of two contrasting ambitions: to search for similarities between otherwise diVerent countries (cultures, regions etc.) or to identify what is speciWc for a country. Observed similarities indicate that there may be general, even universal, processes at work. Observed diVerences point towards what is unique for each unit or case. The Wrst strategy demands that you break down the countries to a set of variables. Each variable is then assumed to have the same eVect in all countries to be compared while the diVerences between them are reduced to a diVerent mix of variables. This is what Gauthier (2000) calls the structuralist approach, where social structure is assumed to have a uniform eVect in all countries that are compared. The strength of this approach is one of stringency in that the researchers are forced to deWne clearly what they are indeed comparing. The researchers are unable to hide behind vague and convenient categories and explanations such as ‘culture’, ‘country’ or ‘society’. They must specify actors, motives and opportunities that may have produced the observed patterns, and they should S. O. Daatland (&) Norwegian Social Research, Oslo, Norway e-mail: svein.o.daatland@nova.no

Peter G. Coleman and Ann O'Hanlon, Ageing and Development: Theories and Research , Arnold, London, 2004, 244 pp., pbk £18.99, ISBN 0 340 75894 5.

tactical avoidance or use of certain committees depending on how the proposed legislation was defined (labour, commerce, finance?). We learn about the importance of timing and of public campaigns to marshal support and wrong-foot the opposition. One of Javits’s catchphrases hit the spot : ‘ it is a rare thing to find a major American institution – private pension plans – built upon human disappointment ’ (p. 164). Then, when all seemed lost, along came the unexpected; the states threatened to act independently, which to many was hated more than federal intervention. ERISA gave pension contributors much greater assurance of entitlements and insurance against corporate default. But because powerful interests did not get their way or kill the bill, this does not mean the ‘public interest ’ (as implied here) prevailed. There is discussion of the deeper problem endemic in regulation of the private sector in welfare provision (p. 278). The author suggests that ERISA and its regulations actually helped to encourage the rise of defined contribution (DC) pension arrangements (where the employee shoulders most of the risk) and what came to be known as 401k plans, as opposed to the defined benefit (DB) schemes, which place greater responsibility on the employer. ERISA could have little effect on the subsequent and inexorable rise of the new arrangements which lacked similar protection or attention to investment risk, pension planning and insurance. In any case, in 2003 the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, established under ERISA as a basis of insurance for private DB-pension schemes, was itself placed on a list of high risk institutions because of the call on its funds for bail-outs. The prevailing ethos returned to one that sees private pensions as a corporate liability, places the onus for pension provision on the individual and, despite enormous public subsidy to the private sector, excepts the state to act as the backstop to pay for any damage. Amongst the piles of publications on pensions in recent years, this book is important for raising the fundamental question, what are private pensions for? In whose interest do they really operate? It is in the ‘public interest ’ that we should know.