International Network for Research on Elder Care  INREC

The International Network for Research on Elder Care (INREC), founded in 1998, comprises a group of social and behavioral-science researchers from several countries whose interests lie at the intersection of several topics:

• the demography of population aging and of family and social-support networks in old age;
• patterns and trends in disease, functioning, and disabilities that give rise to needs for personal care in old age; and
• patterns of exchange and support between generations, including the care received by older persons unable to live independently; the respective roles of family members and of formal or institutional service providers in those care patterns; and the impact of public policies on those patterns.

INREC was founded in response to the shared feeling among its members that their countries exhibit common demographic patterns and trends, as well as distinctive variations on these common patterns, that comparative research particularly fruitful. Each country represented in the Network is experiencing population aging, and, as a consequence, faces pressures on key social institutions-the family and the state-to deal with growing demands to serve the needs of its older population.

Members

          Goals

Activities

Meetings

Projects

Goals

The goals of INREC include the following:

• to formulate research questions, and carry out comparative research projects, that will quantify and permit projections of the processes of population aging and the evolution of family networks;
• to collaborate on the production and dissemination of comparative research on demographic change, disability patterns and their trajectories, and the elder-care patterns that arise in response to them; and
• to produce findings useful to policy analysts and evaluators of programs that provide elder-care services, or influence individuals' and families' decisions about the provision and use of care.

Activities

Network members all have active research agendas that include work on one or more of the topics listed above, and recognize the value of collaborative efforts, particularly on questions usefully addressed from an international, comparative perspective. Moreover, some countries represented in the network have in recent years instituted major changes in social policy regarding elder care. Policy makers, scholarly researchers, and the public in those countries, as well as in other countries facing growing pressures to adapt their policies to new social, demographic and health realities, have a keen interest in determining the impacts, and the costs and consequences, of those policy innovations.

The activities of INREC include coordinated and collaborative research projects; periodic meetings, workshops, or specialized conferences in order to present and critique research findings, identify data resources and specify new data needs, formulate plans for additional research, and facilitate collaboration among its members; and publishing and disseminating research findings. Members will undertake collaborative projects, both within and across countries, producing scholarly and policy-oriented papers based upon the research. Members will circulate drafts of their individually-produced research papers among the Network as a means of more rapidly disseminating new findings, and solicit input and commentary from others, in the interests of improving the work and extending its audience. Members will propose sessions at professional meetings and conferences at which research carried out under INREC auspices is highlighted.

Network activities are expected to be closely linked to the ongoing research activities of its members. However, we expect that new collaborative projects, supported by new funding sources, will be instituted as a result of the Network's existence. While face-to-face contact at meetings and workshops is an essential part of the INREC's functioning, we will also make extensive use of Internet connections in order to carry out long-distance collaborative research.

Meetings

A special session at the 1999 European Population Conference (EPC), held in The Hague August 30-September 3, 1999, highlighted research of INREC members. The session, entitled "Family Care for the Elderly: Demographic and Policy Considerations" included the following papers:

• Heidi Gautun, "Middle-aged children's care of aging parents"
• Svein Olav Daatland, "Community services and family norms in a comparative perspective"
• Pearl Dykstra, "The rhetorics and empirics of childlessness in late life"
• Mike Murphy, "The effect of the 'second demographic transition' on kin distributions of the elderly British population in the 21st Century"
• Ulrike Schneider, "The private and social cost of family care-giving in Germany"

We held an organizational and working meeting of network members immediately prior to the EPC. This meeting was hosted by NIDI. At the meeting network members acquainted themselves more deeply with the work of each other and planned future projects and meetings.

Informal meetings of INREC members were also held in conjunction with the 1999 Gerontological Society of America (GSA) meetings in San Francisco and the 2000 Population Association of America meetings in Los Angeles.

INREC members met in Washington, D.C. on Friday, November 17, 2000, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.  The meeting, held at the Greenberg House, 2301 Calvert Street, Washington DC, included two research sessions. 

The following papers were presented at the morning session:

         Bleddyn Davies, “Dilemmas of balancing high and low cost packages for elderly users.”

         Dorly Deeg, “Determinants of need and use of long-term care services.” 

         Carol Jagger, “Risk factors for entry into residential care: Results from the Melton Mowbray Ageing Project.”

         Ulrike Schneider and Douglas Wolf, “Forgone-earnings costs of elder care in Germany.”

 An afternoon session was devoted to presentations and discussions on data sources and issues in comparative elder care research.  The presentations included:

          Cecilia Tomassini, “There is something moving in the provision of elderly care services in Italy.”

          Karen Glaser, “Sources of formal and informal support for elderly people in Portugal.” 

Douglas Wolf, “A model for comparative analysis of elder care, with preliminary results from the US HIS surveys.”

INREC’s largest meeting to date will take place February 8 and 9, 2002, hosted by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Hannover.  This meeting, supported by funding from the German Research Council, includes an open research conference on Friday, February 8 (AGENDA) and a planning meeting for INREC members on Saturday, February 9.

Projects

 A proposal prepared by a group of INREC members has resulted in a three-year funding grant from the European Science Foundation (ESF) beginning January 2002.  The project is entitled “Family Support for Older People: Determinants and Consequences” (designated  FAMSUP  by the ESF).  The project is intended to study the effects of family behavior and organization, women’s employment, material resources, historical and cultural context and policy on the co-residence and care arrangements of older people in industrialized countries and associations between these and the health and well-being of older people, especially very old people with disabilities. This will be achieved using comparable data for seven European countries and the U.S.A, selected because of the opportunities they provide to make key contrasts.  At a later date data from other European countries and from Japan and Canada may be added.  We intend to concentrate our efforts on individual/household level data (i.e. microdata), particularly longitudinal microdata which will be analyzed in combination with metadata on the policy and cultural context.  

The specific objectives are to:

Analyze the effect of demographic and family patterns (e.g. divorce, intergenerational length, family size, and  non-marital childbearing) on the likelihood of co-residence between adult children and elderly parents and the provision of care for an elderly parent or other elderly relative by an adult child;

Examine the effect of women's employment on the likelihood of co-residence with an elderly parent and the provision of care, distinguishing between co-resident and extra resident care;  

Investigate the relationship between material resources and the living arrangements of older people;  

Analyze associations between living arrangements, especially living alone, and the health and well being of older people in different countries;  

Analyze differences in the residence patterns of childless women in the countries considered and associations between these differences on the one hand and attitudes and long-term care policy on the other;   

Analyze the extent to which associations between demographic factors and family exchange are modified by the cultural, attitudinal and policy variables applicable in each country (and the relative influence of these factors);  

Analyze differentials between and within countries in the health status of the older population and interactions between poor health and other sources of potential disadvantage, such as low income and few family links;  

Characterize and quantify the policy environment and analyze the effect of long-term care policy on multigenerational living arrangements and informal care; and  

Discuss and disseminate implications for policy.  

The project is directed by a Coordinating Committee headed by Emily Grundy.    

Members

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