The 'generational contract' is the most important and also the most contentious dimension of contemporary welfare systems. Much of the debate on how to reform it is still truncated, however, by focusing on its public dimension only, especially on pensions and health-care provisions. For a full account, the transfer of resources between adult generations in the family needs to be included as well. So far, research on family transfers has almost exclusively been limited to singlecountry studies. In this article, we present a comparative study of financial transfers and social support in ten Western European countries based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) conducted in 2004. Our results confirm, at the European level, the existence of a common transfer pattern. There is a net downward flow from the older to the younger generations, both by inter vivos financial transfers and by social support. Transfers from the elderly parents to their children are much more frequent and also usually much more intense than those in the opposite direction. The positive balance decreases with age but even those over the age of 70 clearly remain net givers. Our results also demonstrate that country-specific transfer patterns follow the typology of welfare regimes. Transfers from parents to children are less frequent but more intense in the Southern European countries than in the Nordic ones, with the Continental European countries being somewhere in between the two. This welfare regime effect still holds after controlling for the most relevant characteristics of the parents.

No abstract

Research on social stratification and the transmission of inequality has largely disregarded the role of inter-vivos transfers to adult children. At the same time, the role of social class has been neglected in the literature on intergenerational transfers. In an attempt to link the two research strands, the article assesses the association between occupational social class and parental transfer behaviour. Estimation results from a tobit censored regression model on the basis of data from SHARE show substantial class differences in financial transfers. Existing theories on intergenerational transfers are largely unable to account for this finding. Even after income and wealth are controlled for, service-class parents transfer more resources to their adult children than do working-class parents. We explain the observed class effects in parental transfer behaviour by rethinking inter-vivos transfers as a means of status reproduction.

With the increase of childlessness in European societies, its consequences have become a matter of concern. Studies in this field, however, have concentrated on what childless people lack and need in terms of social, financial and moral support. In contrast, this article focuses on what childless people give to their families, friends, unrelated others and to society at large. Using 2004 data on social support and financial transfers given and received by people aged 50 or more years in ten European countries from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the analyses show that the support networks of childless older people tend to be somewhat weaker than those of parents and that links with members of the younger generations in the family are stronger for parents than for those without children. The results also indicate, however, that the differences in transfer behaviour between parents and childless adults are small, and that the support networks of the childless are more diverse than those of parents, and characterised by stronger links with ascendants and lateral relatives and with non-relatives. Moreover, people without children tend to be more intensely involved in charities and comparable organisations.

The study shows that care systems based on services provision grant higher access to formal care and create lower inequalities. Moreover, countries where cash-for-care programs and family responsibilities are more important register inequalities in the use of formal care. Access to informal care does not mediate the distribution of formal care.

Aerosol particle optical properties were measured continuously between years 2013-2015 at the Marambio station in the Antarctic Peninsula. Annual cycles of particle scattering and absorption were studied and explained using measured particle chemical composition and the analysis of air mass transport patterns. The particle scattering was found elevated during the winter but the absorption did not show any clear annual cycle. The aerosol single scattering albedo at λ = 637 nm was on average 0.96 ± 0.10, with a median of 0.99. Aerosol scattering Ångström exponent increased during summer, indicating an increasing fraction of fine mode particles. The aerosol was mainly composed of sea salt, sulphate and crustal soil minerals, and most of the particle mass were in the coarse mode. Both the particle absorption and scattering were increased during high wind speeds. This was explained by the dominance of the primary marine sea-spray and wind-blown soil dust sources. In contrast, the back-trajectory analysis suggested that long-range transport has only a minor role as a source of absorbing aerosol at the peninsula.

Childlessness is an increasingly common condition in many European societies. The consequences that this demographic phenomenon might have on welfare systems—and long-term care policies in particular—are widespread. This is particularly the case for the familistic welfare states of Southern Europe. Using data from the 2003 Italian GGS, the article explores the relation between the absence of children and support received in later life. Overall, the results support the idea that in Italy elderly nonparents, compared with those who have children, do not face significantly large support deficits in terms of the likelihood of receiving support. However, it is shown that they are likely to miss those forms of support that are most needed in the case of bad health. Next, the childless are more likely to be helped by nonrelatives and not-for-profit organizations and to a lesser extent by the welfare system.

Previous research has found parental divorce to have negative effects on children's educational attainment; in addition, it has been noted that the effects of divorce are not the same in all western societies. However, research on Catholic and southern European countries is missing. The aim of this paper is to add to the research on the relation between parental divorce and the educational attainment of children in Catholic and southern European societies. Italian society differs from other western societies with respect to many characteristics of its family structure, its cultural and religious systems, its social welfare system, and also with respect to the legislation, frequency and characteristics of divorce. Based on data of the Bank of Italy Survey of Households' Income and Wealth, we find that the educational level of the children with divorced parents is lower than the educational level of children with married parents. The analysis indicates that the education of children born to the least educated divorced mothers lags significantly behind children of the least educated married mothers, while the educational level of children of highly educated mothers does not deviate from that of children of highly educated mothers who remain married. Next, contrary to what has been found in other European societies, this research shows that widowhood has a significant negative effect on children's educational attainment as well. Finally, the study also demonstrates that the negative effect of divorce cannot be explained by the negative impact of the religious climate of the region of residence.