The Conditional Relevance of Value Orientations in Intergenerational Care: Institutional Context, Gender and Direction of Care in SHARE

Population ageing has intensified Europe’s reliance on family care, while long-term processes of individualisation are widely assumed to weaken family obligations. This study examines the conditions under which individual value orientations predict participation in intergenerational care among older adults in 27 European countries. Using wave 8 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, 2019–2020), it tests whether four indicators of value orientations (interpersonal trust, religiosity, risk aversion and planning horizon) are associated with care provided to grandchildren and to ageing parents. Grandparental childcare is associated with religiosity and, non-monotonically, with risk aversion; care for parents is associated only with risk aversion, in the same non-monotonic form. Contrary to the expectation that values matter more where discretion is greater, the associations do not differ significantly between the two directions of care, and gender does not moderate them. Institutional context does: the association of trust with caregiving is negative within post-communist Central and Eastern Europe and not negative, or weakly positive, outside it, in both directions. A supplementary analysis of at least weekly care shows that this moderation concerns participation only, while religiosity predicts regular care in both directions. The behavioural relevance of value orientations thus varies less with the direction of care or the caregiver’s gender than with the institutional context in which family care is decided.