Family Solidarity Under Stress: Material Deprivation and Upward Intergenerational Support During COVID-19
Family Solidarity Under Stress: Material Deprivation and Upward Intergenerational Support During COVID-19

Summary/Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic placed an unprecedented strain on intergenerational support, restricting physical contact between adult children and ageing parents precisely as older adults faced elevated health and material risks. This article examines whether the pandemic activated socioeconomic gradients in upward intergenerational support – help received by parents aged 50 and over from their adult children. Drawing on SHARE Wave 8 and the two SHARE Corona Surveys, the analysis compares pre-pandemic, acute-pandemic, and later-pandemic support patterns across five post-socialist European Union member states grouped into Baltic and Central-Eastern European clusters. Binary logistic regression models were estimated separately by regional cluster for five support outcomes. Before the pandemic, socioeconomic position was a weak and inconsistent predictor of upward support. During the pandemic, material deprivation emerged as a significant predictor of receiving help to obtain necessities in both clusters. Wave-specific models suggest that this need-based activation was strongest as a crisis-period response and attenuated by the second pandemic wave, while regional differences between the Baltic and Central-Eastern European clusters were more modest than expected. The findings support a theoretical reading of crisis as a stress test of family solidarity: rather than creating new patterns of support, the pandemic made visible latent material-need gradients in upward intergenerational solidarity. Implications for intergenerational solidarity theory and for research on family-based welfare in post-socialist Europe are discussed.

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