Intragenerational and Intergenerational Discrepancies in Eldercare Attitude and Behavior

노인부양의 불일치 : 태도-행위의 세대내 불일치 및 세대간 불일치

The purpose of this study is to provide empirical findings about intragenerational and intergenerational discrepancies in eldercare attitude and behavior in Korea. Specifically, intragenerational discrepancies refer to phenomena in which eldercare attitude and behavior diverge from each other within the caregiving and care-receiving generations, respectively. Intergenerational discrepancies, on the other hand, refer to two kinds of phenomena, one in which eldercare attitudes are different between caregiver and care-receiver and the other in which eldercare behavior is differently recognized between the two parties. For the last couple decades, these kinds of discrepancies tended to be simply assumed without any coherent theoretical and/or empirical rationales. Thus, the current study tried to investigate the degree, pattern, and characteristics associated with the discrepancies. Analysis of data collected from 276 matched pairs of caregivers (i.e., daughters-in-law) and care-receivers (i.e., the elderly) in Kwangju and its suburb areas has indicated a substantial amount of both intra- and inter-generational discrepancies. In other words, both caregivers and care-receivers were found to be experiencing huge discrepancies between attitude and behavior in their respective generation: the factual discrepancies in attitude between the two generations were quite salient: the cognitive discrepancies in behavior between them were salient, too. In addition, it was also found' that the extent to which the discrepancies became salient differed for the three subdimensions of eldercare (i.e., emotional, economic, and physical care), and that such discrepancies have intimate relationships with a set of sociodemographic characteristics for caregivers - notably, age, educational attainment, area of residence, household income - on the one hand, and those for care-receivers - notably, gender, age, educational attainment, cohabitation, family size, inheritance, owned property - on the other. A series of theoretical, empirical, and clinical implications stemming from the findings were suggested and fully discussed in the context of Korean society.