Social policies and intergenerational support in Italy and South Korea

This article explores the interactions between social policies and exchanges of support between parents aged 50 and over and their adult children in Italy and South Korea. In both countries, families are predominantly responsible for financial and care support to dependent members. However, in the mid-2010s, social security systems, labour market arrangements and family policies allocated resources between age groups in different proportions, favouring pensioners in Italy and prime-age workers in South Korea. Arguably, this difference may influence and interact with exchanges of support within families. Harmonised data for 2012–2013 from surveys of ageing are used to compare exchanges of financial support, instrumental care and intergenerational co-residence between parents aged 50 and above and their adult children. In Italy, where societal transfers favour older generations, intergenerational transfers from parents to children are large, and children provide complementary forms of help to ageing parents. In South Korea, where later-life protection is limited, parents are more heavily dependent upon adult children for financial and care support. The findings add to the existing literature on the relationship between societal and family transfers in European welfare regimes by exploring these interactions in broader contexts and policy areas.