Intergenerational transfers play an important role in individuals' lives across the lifecourse. This paper reviews theories on intergenerational transfers and social change to inform our understanding of how changes in the educational context that arise from the spread of mass education influence children's support of their parents. By examining multiple aspects of the educational context in rural Nepal, including husbands' and wives' education and exposure to schools, this paper provides new information on the mechanisms through which changes in social context influence children's support of their parents. Multilevel logistic regression was used to estimate the relationship between schooling, exposure to schools, and the likelihood of couples giving to their parents. It was found that schooling and exposure to schools have independent and opposite effects on the support of older parents. Higher levels of schooling for husbands were associated with a higher likelihood of having given support to husbands' parents. On the other hand, increased exposure to schools for husbands and wives was associated with a lower likelihood of having given to wives' parents. The findings provide evidence that multiple motivations for intergenerational support exist simultaneously and are related to social context through different mechanisms.

Personal relationships are an integral part of living, working and visiting in care homes, but little research has made relationships the main focus of enquiry, and there have been few studies of the perspectives of residents, staff and family members. The study reported here sought to redress this neglect. Using a constructivist approach, the nature and types of relationships between residents, staff and family members were explored in three care homes in England using combined methods including participant observation, interviews and focus groups. The data collection and analysis occurred iteratively over 21 months and three types of relationships were identified: ‘pragmatic relationships’ that primarily focus on the instrumental aspects of care; ‘personal and responsive relationships’ that engage more fully with the particular needs of individual residents; and ‘reciprocal relationships’ that recognise the roles of residents, staff and family members in creating a sense of community within the home. This paper explores the contributions made by staff, residents and family members in the development of these relationships. The findings enhance our understanding of the role of inter-personal relationships in care home settings and of the factors that condition them. The implications for developing improved practice in care homes are also considered.

This paper reviews the position of old age in the societies of post-Roman Europe, from the fifth to the 10th centuries. Drawing on both primary and secondary literary and material sources of the period, I suggest that living beyond the age of 60 years was an uncommon experience throughout the early Middle Ages. Not only was achieving old age a minority experience, it seems to have been particularly concentrated among the senior clergy. This, together with the growing importance of the Christian Church as the institution that stabilised post-Roman society, the decline of urban living and its attendant culture of leisure and literacy, and the transformation of kinship into a symbolic ‘family under God’ contributed to a more favourable status for old age, or at least one that was particularly favourable for older men. This was based not so much upon the accumulation with age of wealth and privilege, but upon the moral worth of old age as a stage of life. The early Middle Ages, the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, was in this respect a relatively distinctive period in the history of old age. With all around instability and the future uncertain and often threatening, survival into old age was a rare but frequently revered attainment.

This paper examines the impact of the out-migration of adult children on older parents' inter-generational support and psychological wellbeing in rural China. The sample comprised 1,237 older Chinese people aged 60 or more years in the rural province of Anhui, China, who completed baseline and follow-up questionnaires in 2001 and 2003, respectively. The differences between older parents with and without migrant children in 2001 in their support and psychological wellbeing in 2003 were examined using independent t-tests, as were changes over the two years in support and wellbeing. Multiple regression models were used to examine the impact of baseline out-migration on the psychological wellbeing of older parents at follow-up. The results showed that, compared to parents without migrant children in 2001, the parents of migrants had significantly more monetary support, less instrumental support, and a lower level of depression in 2003. Such differences may be attributed to different support resources and health status, but the regressions revealed that when the positive effect of inter-generational support was taken into account, older parents with more migrant children tended to have significantly more depression and lower life satisfaction. The findings point to the importance of continued inter-generational support after out-migration in maintaining parental wellbeing.

In Britain, older people have lower average incomes and a higher risk of income poverty than the general population. Older pensioners are more likely to be in poverty than younger ones. Yet certain indicators of their living standards suggest that older people experience less hardship than expected, given their incomes. A possible explanation is that older people convert income into basic living standards at a higher rate than younger people, implying that as people age they need less income to achieve a given standard of living. Much existing evidence has been based on cross-sectional data and therefore may not be a good guide to the consequences of ageing. We use longitudinal data on people aged at least 50 years from the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the effects of ageing on the relationship between standard of living, as measured by various deprivation indices, and income. We find that for most indices, ageing increases deprivation when controlling for income and other factors. The exception is a subjective index of ‘financial strain’, which appears to fall as people age. We also find evidence of cohort effects. At any given age and income, more-recently-born older people in general experience more deprivation than those born longer ago. To some extent these ageing and cohort effects balance out, which suggests that pensions do not need to change with age.

The associations between socio-economic position (SEP) and physical functioning have frequently been investigated but little is known about which measures of SEP are the best to use for older people. This study examined how different SEP indicators related to the physical functioning of men aged 50 or more years in England and Greece. The data derived from Wave 1 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Self-reported physical functioning limitations and mobility difficulties were combined and categorised into ‘no disability’, ‘mild disability’ and ‘severe disability’. The SEP indicators studied were: wealth, educational level and occupational class. The findings indicate that respondents with less wealth, fewer educational qualifications and lower occupational class were more likely to experience mild or severe physical disability than those of high SEP. When all three measures of SEP were adjusted for each other, in both samples wealth maintained a strong association with mild and severe disability, while education was associated with severe disability but only among English men. Occupational class was not strongly associated with physical disability in either case. Hence, among English and Greek older men, wealth was a more important predictor of physical functioning difficulties than either occupational class or education.

The objective of this paper is to specify the relationships between age and gender differentials in health among older people in China. The data were drawn from the 2002 Chinese Longitudinal Health Longevity Study (CLHLS), which included 15,789 respondents aged 65 or more years. The health indicators included the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental ADL scores, cognitive ability (using the Mini Mental State Examination), visual function, hearing or auditory function, number of natural teeth, self-reported health, and self-reported quality of life. The statistical significance of the age relationships was examined using Mann-Whitney U tests and Spearman's rank correlation coefficients. The principal results were that above 65 years of age, gender differentials were observed in most of the health indicators at most ages, although self-rated quality of life was an exception. For most of the objective (observer-rated) health indicators, the gender differentials increased with greater age, but that for the number of natural teeth decreased with age. Gender differentials in the two subjective health measures had no significant relationship with age. It is concluded that older Chinese women have poorer health than men and are in many ways disadvantaged, and that the relative disadvantage increases with age. Chinese women tend to live longer and suffer ill-health more than men.