Closer Children, Better Health? The Influence of Residential Proximity to Adult Children on Older Parents’ Incident Hospitalization in Finland

Sanny Boy Afable , University of St Andrews

Residential proximity facilitates contact and the exchange of support between ageing parents and their adult children. While intergenerational research has largely focused on how parents’ life course shocks and children’s support needs shape intergenerational proximity, much less is known about how proximity to adult children affects parents’ own health and well-being. This study examines how residential proximity to adult children influences the risk of incident hospitalisation from various causes among parents aged 50 and older in Finland, one of the most rapidly ageing countries in Europe. Drawing from linked Finnish population and health register data from 1994 to 2020, I measure intergenerational proximity in terms of travel times using real-world navigation data, and I distinguish the influence of co-residence and distance to the nearest, non-coresident child. Event-history models indicate a weak link between residential proximity and parental health, with the exception that greater distance to non-coresident children is associated with higher risk of hospitalisation from mental and behavioural disorders: parents living more than 30 minutes away by car have 15% higher odds of hospitalisation from this cause compared to those living within 5 minutes. In contrast, co-residence with adult children is linked to a 7% lower risk of hospitalisation from any cause, with the strongest association observed for hospitalisations due to mental and behavioural disorders (OR = 0.74). These findings suggest that living with or near adult children may contribute to better mental health in later life, and reinforce the role of adult children in their parents' ageing process.

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 Presented in Session 31. Flash Session Family Relationships, Social Networks, Health and Wellbeing in Later Life