Are ageing parents and adult children living farther apart? Decomposing trends in intergenerational distance and co-residence in Finland (2003-2017)

Closer distance between parents and their children facilitates intergenerational contact and exchanges of support in later life. There are mixed narratives and evidence regarding the divergence—or convergence—of intergenerational proximity in ageing societies. In this study, we examine the trends and structural drivers of intergenerational distance and co-residence in a rapidly ageing high-income society. We analyse register data from Finland, a country commonly characterised by weak family ties and a strong social welfare system. Using fine-scale geographic units and real-world navigation data to compute travel times, we examine the proximity of parents aged 60-69 to their children aged 18+ from 2003 to 2017, specifically analysing trends in distance and co-residence between fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, and mothers and daughters. We then decompose the contribution of changing sociodemographic composition of the population on changes in these outcomes. We find that while co-residence is low (10% with sons and 5% with daughters in 2017), more than half of Finnish parents live within 30 minutes by car journey to their nearest, non-coresident child, with parents living 5 minutes farther away from their daughters than their sons. From 2003 to 2017, the average distance to the nearest, non-coresident child increased by 10% to 19% or 2-5 minutes, with father-daughter distance showing the greatest increase. While this suggests that ageing parents and adult children are living farther apart, we find that compositional changes—including educational expansion and increased divorce rates among parents, as well as the decline in co-residence with sons—underlie this geographic divergence.