Helping an elderly, lonely, dependent relative: structural determinants and interactions.

Summary This article studies the determinants of the decisions of members of a sibling group with two children to provide assistance to an elderly, lonely and dependent parent. The application of a semi-structural methodology, already used on European data (SHARE survey), makes it possible to distinguish between structural determinants (individual and family) and interactions (influence of the decision of one member of the sibling on the decision of the other). The results obtained from the 2008 French Handicap-Santé survey confirm the importance of sibling rank in understanding assistance behavior. Indeed, two distinct behavioural logics appear, both in the structural determinants and in the interactions. On the one hand, if children's help is influenced by the characteristics of the parent, whatever their rank, the elders seem to react mainly to the composition of the siblings, while the younger ones adapt their behaviour to their personal constraints. On the other hand, the involvement of the other sibling increases the usefulness of being a caregiver for the elders, while it decreases it for the younger siblings. The elders' help is therefore understood as the acceptance of a social assignment, whereas the younger siblings' help is based on a logic of arbitration, based on the comparison of the costs and benefits associated with help.