Forecasting that the baby-boom generation’s support for their elderly parents add difficulty to their later life preparation, this study aims to investigate the influence of the baby-boom generation’s support for their elderly parents on their lat...
Forecasting that the baby-boom generation’s support for their elderly parents add difficulty to their later life preparation, this study aims to investigate the influence of the baby-boom generation’s support for their elderly parents on their later life preparation and the conditions of their preparation of later life, and to provide basic data necessary for finding out an appropriate method of the baby-boom generation’s later life preparation.
As such, this study carried out a questionnaire survey with baby-boomers aged at 48~56 at least one of whose elderly parents lived together in Seoul and the capital area. A preliminary survey had been carried out with 80 baby-boomers from June 7 to 17 in 2011, and the main survey was implemented
from June 22 to July 13 in 2011. Total 417 baby-boomers’ responses were used as the terminal analytical data.
As for the analyses of the data, Cronbach’s a, frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Duncan’s Multiple Range Test, and Hierarchical Multiple Regression were performed by using the SPSS Windows 18.0 program.
The results of the analyses from this study can be summarized as follows.
First, the baby-boomers’behavior of support for their elderly parents was at a normal level, and emotional support, economic support, and service-like support turned out to be high in this order. However, the baby-boomers’sense of burden of support for their elderly parents were mostly low. The baby-boomers’level of later life preparation was at a normal level, and their leisure and economic preparation proved to be insufficient.
Second, as for the baby-boomers’ behavior of support for their elderly parents in accordance with demographic variables, they showed much behavior of support when their educational levels and income were high, they had more than 4 cohabiting family members, and they had experiences of cohabitation with their elderly parents. As for their sense of burden of support for their elderly parents, they had much sense of burden of support when they had no job as jobless or fulltime homemakers and when they had more than 4 cohabiting family members, and experienced cohabitation with their elderly parents.
Third, as for the baby-boomers’sense of burden of support in accordance with their behavior of support for their elderly parents, the group with higher-than-normal behavior of support had higher sense of burden than the group with lower-than-normalbehavior.
Fourth, baby-boomers’levels of later life preparation in accordance with demographic variables turned out to be higher when their educational levels were higher, they had some religion, and they had no job or were fulltime homemakers. As for baby-boomers’levels of later life preparation with respect to support-related variables, the more supportive behavior they had, the higher their levels of later life preparation. However, there were no significant differences in levels of later life preparation with respect to the sense of burden of support.
Fifth, as for the relative influence of numerous variables of the baby-boomers’levels of later life preparation, the levels were analyzed as higher in accordance with the demographic variablesin the first step when they were women, their ages, educational levels, and incomes were higher, they had some religion. The explanatory power of these variables was 17%. As a result of adding the variable of supportive behavior for elderly parents, the levels of later life preparation proved to be higher when they showed more economic, emotional, and somatic supportive behavior. The explanatory power of this variable was 36%. Lastly, in the third step, as a result of the analysis with the supportive burden for elderly parents added, the explanatory power did not increase, and hence it proved that the supportive burden of elderly parents was not a variable that had influence on the levels of later life preparation.
In conclusion, the baby-boomers turned out to have normal level supportive behavior and their sense of supportive burden inclined to be low. Though the baby-boomers’levels of later life preparation turned out to be higher when their supportive behavior for their elderly parents were higher, theirsense of supportive burden proved not to have significant influence on the levels of later life preparation. However, if the baby-boomer’s
elderly parents enter the super-aged period, their supportive behavior for their parents will increase and their sense of burden is expected to increase due to such sense of burden. The increase in the sense of supportive burden can serve as a factor that lowers the supporters’quality of life, and it can be a restrictive factor against preparing later life. Thus, substantial supportive policies are required including the extension of the benefit of long term Medicare and the expansion of the old people caring system, which can give help to the supporters’parent support. Also, as the results of this study show that the baby-boomers’economic preparation for later life is insufficient, the realization of various supportive policies is necessary including the national pension, expansion of the private income guarantee system, and employment services fitted to people at middle and advanced ages. Moreover, the baby-boomers’successful preparation of later life should be supported by providing fitted education and services for later life design so that they can prepare themselves for later life preparation appropriate for the current conditions.