How demographic changes shape intergenerational solidarity, well-being, and social integration: A multilinks framework MULTILINKS

MULTILINKS is an EU-FP7 project coordinated by Prof. Pearl Dykstra, Department of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam. It started in March 2008. It aims at investigating how changing social contexts, from macro-societal to micro-interpersonal, affect social integration, well-being and intergenerational solidarity across different European nations. Its approach builds from three key premises. First, ageing affects all age groups: the young, the middle-aged, and the old. Second, there are critical interdependencies between family generations and between men and women. Third, different analytical levels must be distinguished: the individual, dyad (parent-child, partners), family, region, historical generation, and country.
The WZB unit is responsible for the reconstruction of the institutional framework of intergenerational relationships, with an attention for their gender specificity. Therefore it is involved in (a) reviewing the existing policy literature and data both from Western European countries and from CEE countries, charting and evaluating cross-national similarities and differences, and integrating findings that remain often separate in their own specialized fields; (b) developing indicators of  “intergenerational regimes”  that can be used cross-nationally, both for purposes of measurement and conceptual refinement of existing welfare typologies; (c) constructing a data basis.
The first report of this unit, where the theoretical approach is developed, the existing literature and data sources are presented and discussed, the indicators to be collected described, is available in the following > PDF document.