Practice of Intergenerational Support and Its Predictors: Evidence from Bangkok Metropolis, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur

Cross generation care-provision contract is changing among developing countries in Southeast Asia (SEA) which, in the last decades, experienced significant changes in age-, family-structures, life-course expansion and shifts in governmental responsibilities on care provision for old-young population. While the SEA societies share prominent over-arching patriarchal family values that prescribe filial expectation, support across generation is posited as a function of distinctive  demographic, socio-political and historical trends in each society.

Guided by the intergenerational solidarity framework, the present paper aims to examine the practice for intergenerational support in functional and affective exchanges taking into account filial norms, structural arrangement and parental needs, focusing on the interaction of gender and marital status, within three metropolitan cities (i.e Bangkok Metropolis, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur). Data from the Comparative Asian Family Survey (CAFS) of three metropolitan cities in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia which comprised respectively 910, 1,188 and 1,523 completed questionnaires from respondents aged 18 and above were analysed.

Findings demonstrated variation in norms and expectations on intergenerational support across these Southeast Asia societies. Result from regression analysis also showed that intergenerational support is determined by mutual support from parents, old age of parent, filial norm and the interaction effect of marital status and gender and, these effects vary for co-residence and non-residence families across societies.

Thus, findings imply distinction in the family system across societies whereby patriarchal family values were more obvious in Hanoi while Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok were less inclined. While, there is evidence on strong support provision from families irrespective of living arrangements; however, the new, diverse demographic and social challenges within SEA societies made the notion of family as the sole provider for old-age support unsustainable. This calls for engagement of non-familial sector to support family care and renegotiation of the gendered filial/familial obligation to accommodate changing needs and conditions in SEA societies today.