Ageing with Limited Family Ties

Because family is crucial for various types of intra- and inter-generational transfers such as economic, instrumental, social, emotional, and care support, family ties are consistently linked to older adults’ well-being across the world. Recent demographic shifts (e.g., population ageing, below-replacement fertility, increased migration) combined with social, economic, and technological changes, have constantly transformed family forms and sizes among the current and future cohorts of older persons. With these shifts, researchers are increasingly interested in the phenomena of solo-living older adults, childless ageing, “kinlessness”, sole family survivorship, elder orphans, and late-life friendship. However, most existing scholarship focuses on Western countries with strongly developed welfare states that offer significant support. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to other parts of the world where similar structural and family transformations continue to take place under different cultural contexts and welfare regimes.

This session aims to bring together empirical papers from diverse geographic regions that address the multi-faceted aspects of ageing with limited family ties, pathways to late-life family forms and relationships, and health and well-being consequences of ageing with limited family ties. It welcomes quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods research that focuses on single countries as well as cross-national comparisons. As global demographic shifts toward smaller families and longer lives continue across the globe, the need for additional empirical work on these topics in underrepresented regions remains urgent.