Gender, marital status and intergenerational relations in a changing world

The worldwide trend towards ageing of societies is well documented with extensive discussions of support and care needs for frail older people. There is less discussion of the implications of gender differences in later life for access to support in the event of frailty or disability. Although, marital status is fundamental to well-being in later life (Arber and Ginn, 1991, 1995; Gaymu et al., 2008), there has been less appreciation of the scale of gender difference in marital status in later life, variations between societies, and their implications. It is important to consider the interaction between gender and marital status and the ways this may change over time (Arber, 2004a; Arber, 2004b; Manning and Brown, 2011). The focus of this chapter is to examine the intersection of gender and marital status in later life across societies, how this links to inter-generational relations, and how global changes make it increasingly important to consider the implications of the gender and marital status interaction when studying access to caregivers and social support in later life