1144621

research-article2023
INQXXX10.1177/00469580221144621INQUIRYFragoso et al

Original Research
INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care

Social Disadvantages and Intergenerational Organization, Provision, and Financing

Volume 60: 1­–9
© The Author(s) 2023
Solidarity Views From Older Adults: Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions

A Qualitative Study DOI: 10.1177/00469580221144621

https://doi.org/10.1177/00469580221144621
journals.sagepub.com/home/inq

António Fragoso, PhD1, Sandra T. Valadas, PhD1,

and Liliana Paulos, PhD1

Abstract
In this article we aim at understanding the influence of social disadvantages on intergenerational solidarity. For this study,
we have considered biographical research through narratives. These narratives help explain and reflect on the beliefs of the
participants, implicit theories, and their life experiences. A snowball sampling technique was considered, and the data were
collected by means of 58 narrative interviews with men aged between 60 and 93 years of age, living in urban and rural areas of
southern Portugal. The interviews were conducted face-to-face in the participants’ houses or community centers. Content
analysis was performed and our results indicated that a low educational background was determinant in the trajectories of
these men. Unqualified or low qualified occupations and, in consequence, low financial capital, had both a direct and indirect
effect on various domains of life. As a result, a significant part of the men live in poverty, and many others experience a very
difficult situation. The results also revealed that social disadvantages had an impact on structural, functional, and associational
solidarities. The levels of intergenerational exchanges are reduced and unsatisfying. Our study suggests that social class is a
key factor in explaining the inequalities of older adults and also influences intergenerational solidarity at a family level.

Keywords
older adults, family intergenerational solidarity, educational background, inequalities

What do we already know about this topic?

The accumulation of social disadvantages can lead individuals into a difficult situation that is beyond their control and
harm various dimensions of their lives. Intergenerational solidarity can, potentially, counteract these negative influences
through the exchange of resources between members of a family lineage.
How does your research contribute to the field?
Educational background is the primary source of perceived inequalities among the participants, which explains the levels
of poverty that older men live in. Social disadvantages have a negative impact on intergenerational exchanges which are
reduced and unsatisfying. Social class and social-economic difficulties seem to reduce solidarity within the family.
What are your research’s implications toward theory, practice, or policy?
New policies should be designed to deal with the poverty of older adults. It is advisable to redefine policies targeting the adult
population and increase the qualifications of adults. These policies should be connected to existing practices, that is, mea-
sures to tackle these problems should be implemented not only during infancy and adolescence, but also during adult life.

Introduction According to the European Union2 by 2050, half of the EU

The intense demographic aging of the world will soon have
an impact on various dimensions of social life. The number
of persons aged 80 years or above is projected to triple in
2050 and 1 in 6 people in the world will be over 65.1 The
aging of the population will be especially intense in Europe.
Member States are projected to have an old-age dependency
ratio above 50.0% (less than 2 working-age people for every
person aged 65 or older). The aging of the working popula-
tion, the higher life expectancy, and younger generations
entering later in the labor market, means that mainly 1 gen-
eration, that of medium age, is working in many European

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2 INQUIRY
countries3: 2 of the 4 living generations in a family lineage
are now retired, while the youngest is at school. In Portugal,
the aging index has risen from 98.8, in 2000, to 182.7 in
2021, being one of the highest of the European Union.4 The
projections show that in 2060, 34.6% of the Portuguese pop-
ulation will be aged 65 or older, with almost half of the older
adults (46.5%) aged 80 years or more.5
In this scenario, older adults became a source of concern.
Frequently described as a homogeneous group, but also as a
problematic one,6-8 it is important to study the impact of indi-
vidual, structural, and societal factors throughout the life
course and, particularly, at an old age. Gender caught our
attention because of its effect in participating in adult educa-
tion and learning: on average, in the EU28, female partici-
pation is higher than male participation.9 Men are becoming
the minority of participants in many learning spaces.10,11
Previous research12,13 indicated that promoting learning
among older men, especially those with high levels of illit-
eracy, could make a difference in several scopes of their lives
affecting, in a quite positive way, their well-being. These
arguments were the basis of the European project focused on
the learning of 60-year-old-men or older, which was used as
a data source for this article.
This demographic scenario led supranational institutions
and governments to embrace the concept of Intergenerational
Solidarity (IS): briefly defined as social cohesion between
generations14-16. It can be reflected at the societal level, but
also at the group level and, more specifically, in families. At
the societal level, political decision-makers and social scien-
tists worry about the sustainability of the social security and
pension system, as well as the increase in public expenditure
via health systems. This has produced recurrent analysis17 of
the financial and tax burden for younger generations, and is
seen as largely excessive compared to that of previously
older generations. With this reasoning, there is a serious
imbalance in the flow of generational financing that can
potentially cause conflicts between the generations. However,
resources transferred between generations include much
more than public economic exchanges. Care and various
types of support, for example, are difficult to quantify and do
not appear in this type of accounting, but can be analyzed
within families.
Demographic changes seem to affect the structure of
family networks, reducing the number of members and the
distribution by age. The increase in life expectancy and the
1
University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Received 27 July 2022; revised 18 November 2022; revised manuscript accepted 22 November 2022
Corresponding Author:
Liliana Paulos, Research Centre on Adult Education and Community Intervention, Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University of Algarve, Campus
de Gambelas, Edificio 1, Faro 8005-139. Portugal.
Email: lspaulos@ualg.pt
coexistence of multiple generations living over a broader
timespan may reinforce intergenerational bonds, creating
denser exchanges between family members.18 This means
that solidarity between the members of a family lineage can
potentially be positive and counteract some of the social dis-
advantages experienced by older men. Therefore, our aim
is to analyze social disadvantage and understand its influ-
ence on intergenerational relations. Our research question
can therefore be formulated in the following way: Can
solidarity within the family have a positive effect on the
lives of older men? We will focus mainly on the dimen-
sions of the family level. Nevertheless, when relevant, we
will reflect on the private-public relationships. We will
begin by theorizing on social disadvantages and proceed to
define micro-solidarities.
Social Disadvantage
Generally speaking, social disadvantage refers to the differ-
ence that privileges or limits a certain social group, such as
economic status, educational background, gender, and age,
among others.19 Inequality reveals itself in access to basic
rights but mainly in access to opportunities.
Primary factors causing social disadvantages are low lev-
els of literacy20 and education. Occupation represents the
major structural link between education and income. In turn,
income relates directly to the material conditions that may
influence health, regardless of employment status.21
The experience of simultaneous, permanent, or long-last-
ing disadvantages in more than 1 life domain further reduces
people’s ability to manage everyday life.22 Also, the proba-
bility of experiencing simultaneous disadvantages in more
than 1 life domain seems to be higher for the older age groups
than for the younger age groups,23-25 which means that the
accumulation of disadvantages could be amplified by old
age vulnerabilities.25 This vulnerability of older adults to
inequality has been gaining increasing attention.9,23,26,27
Several studies21,28,29 revealed that among older adults differ-
ent indicators are associated with each other. For example,
Avlund et al30 suggested that income and tenure which reflect
material wealth were related to functional decline and death
in both men and women.
Research on cumulative disadvantages has shown that
financial capital in later life is determined by previous
employment history and, therefore, influenced by educational
Fragoso et al
level and occupational status.31,32 The existing evidence
suggests that the amount of pension benefit depends on the
individual employment history (eg, regular or atypical
employment; frequency of employment interruptions), and
the chance to save for retirement or to enroll in private pen-
sion savings depends on the level of income during working
life.33 Therefore, earlier inequalities in educational attainment
and in labor market position can lead to serious economic
inequalities in old age.
More recently, Shaw et al27 demonstrated that several
types of disadvantages are consistently associated with the
probability of living alone including financial insecurity,
never having been married, for women, and never having
been married and mobility impairment, for men. Also, for
older men, low education has become an increasingly strong
determinant of living alone. These findings, from a repeated
cross-sectional survey of Swedish adults aged 77+ during
1992 to 2014, suggest that older adults who live alone are a
subgroup that is particularly, and in some cases increasingly
vulnerable, with respect to social and functional status.
Intergenerational Solidarity
IS seems to connect intrinsically both solidarity and conflict.
Underlying solidarity is the notion that bonds are created
between individuals and groups in such a way that affection,
interaction, and providing assistance are intrinsic to this
bonding. Solidarity and conflict are difficult to measure in
social science research15 but solidarity can be at least under-
stood qualitatively at the family level when we introduce
questions to understand the relations between members of
the family lineage, for example.
IS is understood within the context of shared expectations
and obligations, which, at the micro-level, can be interpreted
in the succession of generations within families. Six concep-
tual dimensions were used to understand IS15,16: (i) affectual
solidarity—type and degree of positive sentiments held
about family members, and the degree of reciprocity of these
sentiments; (ii) associational solidarity—the type and fre-
quency of contact between intergenerational family mem-
bers; (iii) consensual solidarity—agreement in opinions,
values, and orientations between generations; (iv) functional
solidarity—the giving and receiving of support across gen-
erations, the exchanges of resources; (v) normative solidar-
ity—expectations regarding filial obligations and parental
obligations as well as norms about the importance of familis-
tic values; and (vi) structural solidarity: the “opportunity
structure” for cross-generational interaction reflecting geo-
graphic proximity between family members.
It was impossible for us to focus on all 6 components of
IS. To characterize deeply some of these types of solidarity
we would have to use quantitative instruments or scales.
Therefore, we will focus only on those types of solidarity we
have qualitative data on, namely associational solidarity,
functional solidarity, and structural solidarity.
3
It is important to stress that structural solidarity affects
functional solidarity, through geographical distance, and
the mediating effect of some household characteristics
(eg, health, socioeconomic status, and gender). Thus the
“exchanges of support and distribution of resources may
reinforce, not reduce, social inequalities as the most deprived
and penurious in the poorest groups seem to receive less
support.”34 This links strongly with social disadvantages, the
social and economic status of people, and social class.35
Structural factors should not be overlooked.
Intergenerational relations are complex and can be
extremely positive or extremely negative. The benefits of
positive solidarity between generations appear frequently in
the literature,36 but also customarily in publications focusing
on aging as a chance for negative consequences or conflic-
tive relationships between the generations.37 Again, it is dif-
ficult to separate solidarity from conflict. In a way, when
solidarity fails or is absent, there is the possibility of conflict.
The idea of solidarity/conflict implies that exchanges
between generations can be imbalanced38 for different rea-
sons. First, generational exchanges are not only determined
by individuals but mediated by the state and the market.39
The distribution between who pays taxes, buys services, and
gives or receives time or care is a function of many different
factors, some of them established as state obligations of mar-
ket rules. Over time economic and financial factors also have
an influence on the amount of resources available to different
generations. The imbalance of exchanges between genera-
tions can also be seen at the micro family level. Despite the
fact that families are also influenced by macro factors (this is
evident during a crisis), individual choices also matter. For
example, grandparents often assume the care of grandchil-
dren without knowing if their adult children would care for
their parents in the future.39 Other studies demonstrate that
the flow of resources like caregiving and social support, is
higher downward than inward,40 although the intensity and
regularity of these downward flows depend on the health and
socioeconomic status of parents.41 It seems clear that IS com-
prises a number of interconnected dimensions. The lives of
families cannot be separated from macro-factors such as the
influence of the state or the market39; and there is a public
and a private dimension of IS.42,38 Even if our focus, in this
article, is on families, we should be able to produce some
comments on the wider dimensions of IS.
Methods
This is a qualitative study since our purpose is to understand
people’s experiences from their own points of view.43
Biographical research is adequate to provide interpreta-
tions of subjects’ accounts regarding their past, present, and
future44 and offer rich insights into the dynamic interplay of
individuals and history, self, and other.45
We used narrative interviews to capture different aspects of
the participant’s life course46: childhood (family background
4 INQUIRY
and schooling), working life, transition to retirement, and cur-
rent situation (health status, financial situation, family, and
social networks).
Participants
We interviewed 82 men between 60 and 93 years old living
in urban and rural areas of southern Portugal (region of
Algarve).
The participants were arranged into 3 groups, based on
educational level and context of life (rural or urban): (i)
group 1 included men with low educational backgrounds
from urban areas (n = 30); (ii) group 2 integrated men with
low educational levels, but living in rural areas (n = 28); and
(iii) group 3 was made up of men with higher educational
background from urban and rural areas (n = 24). In this arti-
cle, we only considered the results from group 1 and 2
(n = 58), due to our focus on social disadvantages.
More than half of the participants were married or cohab-
iting, the rest of them were widowed, divorced, and single.
Most of them had between 1 and 5 children, and some of
them had grandchildren, brothers/sisters, and nephews/
nieces. Regarding educational background, many of the par-
ticipants had 4 years of schooling or less (3 were illiterate)
and a minority of them had between 5 and 9 years of school-
ing. Most of the participants were retired and during their
active life they worked in the services and trade activities
sector (eg, merchant and seller), artisans and qualified work-
ers (eg, bakers and mechanics), and unskilled professionals
(fishermen and construction workers). Overall, the partici-
pants had a lower socioeconomic status based on their educa-
tion, income, and type of job.
Instrument
As previously mentioned, we chose the narrative interview.47
Although it is an in-depth interview, a previous script was
prepared to promote interaction with the interviewee and to
obtain a greater wealth of data.48 The interview script was
developed based on the literature review. The purpose was to
understand how the older adults lived and prepared for retire-
ment. It was developed in English by one of the teams that
participated in the project (Anonymous) and then it was
translated into Portuguese and adapted to the Portuguese
reality. In a second phase, the script was analyzed by 2
experts, considering “clarity,” “adequacy,” and “relevance.”
It was tested with 4 older men. Some changes were made,
namely, the modification of concepts that were not adequate
and the reformulation of items with a dubious or unclear
meaning. The final version included 4 themes: (i) the profes-
sional pathway and experiences; (ii) the preparation for
retirement; (iii) the dynamics and relationships with family
and friends, their neighborhood, and socialization; and (iv)
the participation in the community, problems identified, and
suggestions.
Procedures
Regarding ethical issues, all the participants were voluntary,
and none of them received any kind of incentive to participate
in the study. The participants signed an informed and free
consent statement where they were informed about all the
study-related issues (eg, aims, methods, sources of funding,
and institutional framework), anonymity, confidentiality,
researcher’s duties, and responsibilities. The acronym PART
(1, 2, 3. . .) means participant and was used to guarantee ano-
nymity when we did match the quotes to the participant.
A snowball sampling technique was followed. The first con-
tact with the participants was made in person through the sup-
port of civil society organizations (eg, day centers and
community centers). From the network of contacts of these
older men, we obtained other participants. These new partici-
pants were contacted by telephone and all of them accepted to
participate in the study. The selection considered age and gender
(men aged 60 years or more) and respecting the heterogeneous
nature of the elderly (work status, education, income, marital
status, and their participation in civil society organizations).
The empirical saturation technique was applied.49 The
inclusion of new participants was suspended based on the
data that had been collected or analyzed hitherto, further data
collection and/or analysis were unnecessary. Data collection
was carried out between May and December of 2018 and the
interviews were conducted face-to-face. Most of the inter-
views took place in the participants’ residences. However,
some were conducted in private spaces in the institutions of
civil society through which the participants were contacted.
Each interview lasted between 90 and 150 minutes. In some
cases, we conducted 2 interviews per participant. All inter-
views were audio-recorded, previously authorized by the
participants, so that the transcription of the information was
as reliable as possible.
We used qualitative content analysis50 to understand
meaning51 because it allows us to define categories through
an inductive procedure. We searched for emergent patterns
of meaning52 that could guide us in building categories. First,
we transcribed the interviews and returned the transcripts to
each participant (only to literate participants who shared an
email address) to validate the information. After the tran-
scription, collection, and building of a corpus of analysis
(resulting data), we carried out a floating reading of the inter-
views53 to find commonalities between the responses. We
then created a coding frame for each group, inductively, in a
data-driven way. This means that the interview transcripts
were read to understand how the older adults' social disad-
vantages influenced intergenerational solidarity.
Findings
Social Disadvantages
Several conditions limit both groups of men who were inter-
viewed in the research, but these are primarily related to their
Fragoso et al
educational background. A significant number of older men
have low levels of literacy. Consequently, most of them had
unqualified or manual jobs for most of their lives. These are
the type of insecure jobs that brought them a very low finan-
cial capital and impeded them from saving up money over
the years. Due to financial shortage, some men are today in
their old age dependent on assistance and solidarity to get
their meals and have at least a room to live, as illustrated by
this quote: “I live with great economic difficulties. . . (pause)
after a lifetime of work that guaranteed me a comfortable
life. Today, I got food from the (Community) Centre because
the disability pension was refused” (PART19, 64 years old,
single, 4th grade, rural area).
As some have worked informally for long periods of
their lives (pensions systems based on working contribu-
tions were only created after democracy) they receive pen-
sions around or below 200€, in a country where the minimum
wage is about 665€ and renting a very small flat in a periph-
eral area costs at least 300€/month. Hence, some need to
work even after retirement for survival purposes. The inten-
sity of financial difficulties is higher in urban areas than in
rural areas.
So, previous inequalities in educational achievement and
position in the labor market can lead to severe financial
inequalities in old age. The men’s low financial capital had
a direct influence on at least 2 other life dimensions: health
and social networks. Although the national health system is
mainly free, some medical areas of expertise are absent
from health centers and hospitals or imply long waiting peri-
ods. Critical or sudden health problems have further conse-
quences difficult to deal with and can reduce men’s mobility
and compromise their ability to socialize, therefore contrib-
uting to the shrinkage of social networks. Some still have
families, but a significant number are living alone and do
not meet family members regularly. Mobilizing various
types of resources is quite difficult for these men, and loneli-
ness is a severe problem that affects many of the men
interviewed:
My son and daughter-in-law are my biggest support. I have
no relationship with other family members who live close by.
They only visited me when I was hospitalized. I don't have
neighborhood relations because I do not have neighbors
anymore. In the past, people lived together more, neighbors met
on the street. I often feel lonely, when I feel like this, I watch
TV until I fall asleep (PART17, 84 years old, widower, illiterate,
urban area).
Educational background was determinant in these men’s tra-
jectories, leading to unqualified or low-qualified occupa-
tions. Consequently, low financial and social capital seems to
be a “death sentence” difficult to surpass, along with ampli-
fied old-age vulnerabilities. Experiencing disadvantages
simultaneously, and in more than 1 domain, diminishes the
capacity to have a dignifying life, leading to the accumula-
tion of disadvantages, very complicated to disentangle.
5
Intergenerational Solidarities
Group 1 includes older men from urban areas with low edu-
cational backgrounds and economic status, living in very
precarious conditions and frequently suffering from health
problems. Our interviews allowed us to analyze the effects of
these conditions on the various types of intergenerational
solidarities.
Regarding structural solidarity, among these men, the
interaction with their families is very poor and unsatisfying.
Because of their low income, we find a minority with a driv-
er’s license and none has a car. This can represent a serious
constraint in terms of mobility when public transportation is
working deficiently. Their interactions with adult children or
grandchildren are scarce. New communication technologies
could eventually facilitate contacts or help with some kind of
support. But because of their economic status, none of the
men we interviewed use computers or other digital devices.
Also, not all possess a mobile phone, and the ones who do,
make a basic use of it. This means that geographical distance
constrains today’s cross-generational interactions.
When we analyze social contacts and shared activities
between intergenerational family members (associational
solidarity), loneliness is a serious problem that affects most
of the men in this group. Many of them are widowers and
living alone, in some cases in a small precarious “room”
rented by a friend. There are others that do not have a place
to stay at all. Some of them have families, but they do not
meet family members frequently.
I have a daughter, two grandchildren and a brother. My daughter
works nearby, and I'll meet her at work if she doesn’t come to
see me. I don’t usually hang out with my grandchildren. My
youngest grandson is two years old, and I do not know him yet.
When I was sick, my ex-wife and brother visited me, but my
daughter never came to see me. My sister-in-law is a person who
cares about me, who asks me how I am doing, if everything is
okay. (PART 28, 62 years old, divorced, 5th grade, urban area)
Generally speaking, many of these men have health and
mobility problems, being confined to the area of their neigh-
borhood. This means that they are destined to wait for the
visits of their adult children and grandchildren or are limited
to phone calls. The major part of their socialization is not
intergenerational, but among people of similar age groups
and use of the public spaces of the cities. Contacts with
neighbors are “civilized” but not deep, and friends are scarce:
I have a young neighbor who helps me with what I cannot do
(shopping, going to the pharmacy). I do not have relationships
with the neighborhood, because it is all new people. In the
past, people would gather at the door and talk, get involved in
the community. I would like to make new friends, before I
participated in activities (going to the theater), but as I have
mobility difficulties I stopped participating. I'm used to being
alone, I watch TV, I call friends, old co-workers (PART 21,
68 years old, single, 6th grade, urban area).
6 INQUIRY
Functional solidarity is characterized by intergenerational
exchanges of support and resources (eg, financial, physical,
and emotional) but, once again, the primary conditions of
these men seem to be the basis of a low level of exchanges.
During their working life, the scarcity of their financial
resources meant that there was not much to share with their
children or adolescents, nor, later, with their adult children
or grandchildren. It could eventually happen that inward
economic exchanges would be predominant at present. But
our interviews show that only a minority of these older men
have financial support from the younger generations. The
same happens with care: only a few receive it from their
adult children whereas a significant group goes to day-care
centers to get their meals, hygiene, help with medication,
and company from other older adults. So, functional soli-
darity is characterized by a low level of intergenerational
exchanges of all sorts. We have not identified in our inter-
views signs of overt conflict between generations, but often
these men show signs of sadness, bitterness, and even
depression.
Group 2 includes older men from rural areas with low
educational backgrounds and economic status. Their finan-
cial difficulties are of lower intensity when compared to
older urban men. The context functions as a buffer that
impedes falling under the threshold of poverty. A significant
part has occupations related to subsistence agriculture: either
they have small rural properties that provide basic food and
some informal complementary income, or they have manual
occupations related to the rural world—also providing some
complementary income.
Social and geographical space is crucial to analyze asso-
ciational and structural solidarity. These men and their fami-
lies live in isolated communities or small fragmented clusters
of houses spread throughout the country, in a mountainous
area with deficient infrastructures, lack of services of all
types (educational and health services being the most salient)
and public transport is almost nonexistent.
The “mountainous identity” includes a fatalist dimension
that internalizes social and economic decay as a collective
fate—there is no future in those areas. Quite often families
assume it to be a major task of life to encourage their chil-
dren to get an education, look for a job somewhere else and
never come back. This means that structural solidarity is
closely connected with associational solidarity: geographic
lack of opportunity is the major factor that leads to the low
frequency of contact between parents and their children,
which moreover reduces as children grow older and migrate.
Also, the lack of opportunities for leisure in mountainous
communities is such that shared activities are in most cases
reduced to a minimum. Almost all adult children studied
(some, but not much, in higher education) and later found
jobs very far away from their parents. In these situations,
contacts are limited to some weekends from time to time.
Soon, this new generation “visit” their parents and later on
“visit” their grandparents when possible.
Therefore, functional solidarity is based on uneven
exchanges that become eroded as time goes by. There was a
considerable flow of downward exchanges, which were
financial, care, and support, from parents to children and
adolescents, but the young adult’s migration searching for
jobs in urban areas impedes the reciprocity of such flows.
While it is more common that the 2 older generations con-
tinue to live in mountainous communities, the younger ones
represent those who migrated. The opportunities that this
younger generation has to make concrete inward exchanges
are indeed very limited. As happened with group 1, we have
not identified an overt conflict between generations, or older
men complaining about the support and care they get from
younger generations. Quite the opposite: although older men
do not like their solitude, they assume there is no way out and
that younger generations should go on with their lives.
In short, the situation of older adults in these mountainous
communities is characterized by small social networks and
low social capital, isolation, loneliness, and lack of opportu-
nities even to socialize within their own age groups. Access
to health services, mobility, and access to care are serious
problems that even public policy cannot handle. State or pri-
vate care services for older adults are distant.
Discussion and Conclusion
Our results revealed that illiteracy and educational back-
ground are the primary sources of inequalities, as previously
shown by Machin.20 This has been a very common and well-
known fact for decades. However, less common is to trace
the direct and indirect consequences of primary factors such
as education and financial capital over the life course to
explain how complex is the situation of older adults who
were exposed to cumulative disadvantages. We have shown
that occupation is a major link that determines income which,
in turn, has a great deal of influence on the older adult’s
health,21 the incapacity to save for retirement33 and, as sup-
ported by other studies,27 in increased vulnerability to living
alone. The theory of cumulative disadvantages has therefore
a high degree of utility, particularly in explaining how seri-
ous the situation of older men is.
On the other hand, it is striking that public social security
is unable to deal with people’s extreme frailty and poverty,
questioning the existing flows between private and public
life. An important part of the resources exchanged between
generations, either inward or downward, stays in the private
domains of life and functions as a positive support when
complemented by the resources exchanged via public
domains. But the men we interviewed belong to the working
class. Their financial capital does not allow a sufficient dis-
tribution of private resources between generations through-
out their life course. As a consequence, at an old age, the
private inward exchanges are also not sufficient to assure
them a dignified life and thus they depend on the state. If
historically family solidarity was substituted by public
Fragoso et al
solidarity, it seems that in Portugal the state provision in a
neoliberal context has made this promise in vain. We there-
fore agree with Bawin-Legros and Stassen: 42 it seems that
the public transfers which assure the relative autonomy
between adult generations are weakening and the private sec-
tor is growingly affirming its importance.
This means that, in the context of IS, relations between
the state and the citizens are not uniform or universal. Our
results show that the public systems are unevenly used by
people according to social class. A minimal state that reduces
its provision to citizens affects many more people from the
working class—middle classes have financial resources to
turn to the private sector, when needed. Regarding intergen-
erational solidarity, this effect was previously pointed out by
Künemund.54
The analysis of the interviews makes clear that social
class is central in explaining the situation of older adult men.
It further suggests that intergenerational solidarity at the
family level is largely influenced by social class. Although
not much of the literature talks about social class, gender, or
ethnicity regarding older adults, the study made by Timonen
et al,55 in Ireland, concluded that intergenerational solidarity,
at the family level, is strongly contoured by socioeconomic
status and that intergenerational solidarity within families is
also shaped by the welfare state.
As a first conclusion, we should stress that the perceptions
of older men in our sample allowed us to understand the dev-
astating role of social disadvantages in the aging process.
More, it explains the persistence of poverty in working-class
groups at an older age, especially serious when combined
with the inefficacy of the welfare system. Our second con-
clusion relates to IS. Our results indicate that people in pov-
erty have unsatisfying intergenerational solidarity levels. We
would expect that IS solidarity could potentially compensate
for the difficult situation these men live in. But actually, we
have revealed the opposite. This also seems to give strength
to researchers that claim that intergenerational solidarity
may even mask the causes of inequalities. For example,
Timonen et al35 argue, as Kohli,56 that highlighting the gen-
erational conflict as the new basic cleavage in society tends
to contain other inequalities and may distract attention from
still-existing problems of poverty and exclusion.
Our conclusions have implications for policy and prac-
tice. In order to prevent the destructive effects of social dis-
advantages on working-class older adult groups, new policies
should be designed to deal with the poverty of older adults.
As low educational background is the basic factor that deter-
mines these inequalities, it is advisable to redefine policies
targeting the adult population and increase the qualifications
of adults. These policies should be connected to practice
because measures to tackle these problems should be imple-
mented, not just during infancy and adolescence, but also
during adult life. Instruments to assess poverty risk during
adult life should be created in order to allow coordinated
action between the state and civil society organizations.
7
We have to consider the limitations of the investigation.
As previously mentioned, the original purpose of the inter-
views was to understand how older adults live and prepare
for retirement. In consequence, the interviews were not fully
adequate for the central purpose described in this paper, and
it is possible that we miss some information. A second limi-
tation connects with the impossibility to consider in this
paper the group of highly educated men (we do not have the
necessary space), which would show the other side of the
social reality we described—like a mirror. A third limitation
refers to the fact that we have only interviewed men. We
have not collected women’s perceptions, nor the perceptions
of some other members of the family lineage. This advises
that in the future we can design more complete research that
can shed more light on this complex issue.
Author’s Note
António Fragoso is now affiliated to Research Centre on Adult
Education and Community Intervention, Faculty of Human and
Social Sciences, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
This work was supported by the Foundation for Science and
Technology—FCT [Project UIDB/05739/2020].
Ethical Approval
Our study did not require an ethical board approval because it was
part of a project which ended before the publishing of the Ethics
Committee of the University of Algarve (February 2020).
Consent Statement
All the participants of the study were voluntary, and all signed an
informed and free consent statement where they were informed
about all the study-related issues (eg, aims, methods, sources of
funding, and institutional framework), anonymity, confidentiality,
researcher’s duties, and responsibilities.
ORCID iD
Liliana Paulos https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9743-9719
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