Rapports de générations et parcours de vie

Par rapport au titre initialement prévu, je vais quelque peu modifier ma communication pour tout d’abord cerner la notion même de génération avant d’aborder les relations entre parcours de vie et rapports inter-générations. Régine Robin m’a, en effet, demandé d’essayer de clarifier cette notion qui est très complexe, polysémique et qui fait l’objet de controverses importantes. Pour cela, je procéderai à un retour en arrière, en recherchant les divers usages de la notion de génération au cours..

Do Parents Help More their Less Well-Off Children? Evidence from a Sample of Migrants to France

Through an investigation of parental motives, this paper examines how parents decide on the allocation of their resources within the family when there are several offspring. From a theoretical viewpoint, inter vivos transfers may be explained either by altruism or by an exchange motive. Though unequal sharing is expected under both hypotheses, under altruism parents should direct their assistance to less well off children. Analogously, under an exchange motive we expect support to be channeled to children who live nearby their parents. We assess the relevance of the two transfer motives using the PRI survey, conducted in 2003, on a sample of immigrants living in France. Unequal sharing is frequently observed, and children are more likely to receive financial transfers when they are in poor circumstance, but not necessarily when living in proximity to parents. This is the case even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity with fixed effects models. We also emphasize the role of cultural factors, especially religion, as determinants of the parental allocation among children.altruism, exchange, inter-vivos transfers, intrahousehold allocation, unequal sharing, cultural effects

Transfers from Migrants to Their Children: Evidence That Altruism and Cultural Factors Matter

This paper focuses on the determinants of financial inter vivos transfers by migrants living in France in 2003 to their adult children. From a theoretical viewpoint, such transfers may be explained either by altruism or by exchange. While parents would direct their assistance to their less well off children under altruism, support should be channeled to children who live nearby their parents under the exchange motive. We assess the relevance of these two motives using the French PRI survey. Unequal sharing is frequently observed and children are more likely to receive financial transfers when they are in poor circumstance, but not necessarily when living in proximity to parents. We also emphasize the role of cultural factors as determinants of the parental allocation among children. Muslim parents, in particular, are more likely to make transfers to sons than to daughters

Do Parents Help More Their Less Well-off Children? Evidence from a Sample of Migrants to France

Through an investigation of parental motives, this paper examines how parents decide on the allocation of their resources within the family when there are several offspring. From a theoretical viewpoint, inter vivos transfers may be explained either by altruism or by an exchange motive. Though unequal sharing is expected under both hypotheses, under altruism parents should direct their assistance to less well off children. Analogously, under an exchange motive we expect support to be channeled to children who live nearby their parents. We assess the relevance of the two transfer motives using the PRI survey, conducted in 2003, on a sample of immigrants living in France. Unequal sharing is frequently observed, and children are more likely to receive financial transfers when they are in poor circumstance, but not necessarily when living in proximity to parents. This is the case even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity with fixed effects models. We also emphasize the role of cultural factors, especially religion, as determinants of the parental allocation among children

The inter-relationship between formal and informal care: a study in France and Israel

ABSTRACT This study examined whether formal care services delivered to frail older people's homes in France and Israel substitute for or complement informal support. The two countries have comparable family welfare systems but many historical, cultural and religious differences. Data for the respondents aged 75 or more years at the first wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) were analysed. Regressions were examined of three patterns of care from outside the household : informal support only, formal support only and both formal and informal care, with the predictor variables including whether informal help was provided by a family member living in the household. The results revealed that about one-half of the respondents received no help at all (France 51 %, Israel 55 %), about one-tenth received care from a household member (France 8 %, Israel 10 %), and one-third were helped by informal carers from outside the household (France 34 %, Israel 33 %). More French respondents (35 %) received formal care services at home than Israelis (27 %). Most predictors of the care patterns were similar in the two countries. The analysis showed that complementarity is a common outcome of the co-existence of formal and informal care, and that mixed provision occurs more frequently in situations of greater need. It is also shown that spouse care-givers had less formal home-care supports than either co-resident children or other family care-givers. Even so, spouses, children and other family care-givers all had considerable support from formal home-delivered care

‘I think I'm more free with them'—Conflict, Negotiation and Change in Intergenerational Relations in African Families Living in Britain

While the family is increasingly being recognised as pivotal to migration, there remain too few studies examining how migration impacts on intergenerational relationships. Although traditional intergenerational gaps are intensified by migration, arguably there has been an over-emphasis on the divisions between ‘traditional’ parents and ‘modern’ children at the expense of examining the ways in which both generations adapt. As Foner and Dreby [2011. “Relations Between the Generations in Immigrant Families.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 545–564] stress, the reality of post-migration intergenerational relations is inevitably more complex, requiring the examination of both conflict and cooperation. This article contributes to this growing literature by discussing British data from comparative projects on intergenerational relations in African families (in Britain, France and South Africa). It argues that particular understandings can be gained from examining the adaptation of parents and parenting strategies post-migration and how the reconfiguration of family relations can contribute to settlement. By focusing on how both parent and child generations engage in conflict and negotiation to redefine their relationships and expectations, it offers insight into how families navigate and integrate the values of two cultures. In doing so, it argues that the reconfiguration of gender roles as a result of migration offers families the space to renegotiate their relationships and make choices about what they transmit to the next generation

Comparing Welfare Regime Changes: Living Standards and the Unequal Life Chances of Different Birth Cohorts

The cohort sustainability of welfare regimes is of central importance to most long-term analyses of welfare state reforms (see for example: Esping-Andersen et al., 2002). A complement to these analyses shows that changes in intra versus inter cohort inequalities are major outcomes or consequences of the trajectories of the different welfare regimes. Previous comparative research papers show the difference between France and the United-States, since the American intra-cohort inequalities have increased strongly for the last three decades, when the French case show less intra-cohort inequalities and more inter-cohort imbalances at the expense of younger generations of adults (Chauvel 2006). Here, we propose a comparison between the US, Danish, French, and Italian dynamics of distribution of after tax and transfers equivalised income by age, period and cohort, to assess how different welfare regimes gave different trade-offs between intra and inter cohort inequality. The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data are used to analyze the transformations of the intra cohort inequalities (based on interdecile ratios) and the changes in the cohort life chances. The main result is that the conservative and the familialistic welfare regimes are marked by more inter-cohort inequalities to the expense of young social generations, who are relatively impoverished, when the social-democrat and the liberal ones show less inter-cohort redistribution of resources, but increasing intra-cohort inequality, particularly in the case of the US. In terms of cohort sustainability of welfare regimes, the French and Italian dynamics seem to be unsustainable since the contemporary well-off seniors are flowed by impoverished mid-aged groups who will be poor seniors of the 2020s