Helping an elderly dependent parent. Configurations of assistance and interactions in siblings in France.

Summary Based on the Handicap-Santé survey, Household component (INSEE-Drees, 2008), we study the configurations of family assistance around an elderly and dependent parent in France. A first descriptive step shows that the assistance provided by children is affected by the parent's marital status, the size of the siblings and the rank in the siblings. The analysis then focuses on two-child families and shows that the differences in mobilization observed according to rank stem from three sources: differences in individual characteristics between older and younger siblings, the different impact of these characteristics on the decision to help, and finally a difference in the adjustment of one to the behavior of the other (endogenous interactions). The impact of family characteristics appears to be relatively similar for older and younger people - in particular the strong assignment of women with a brother to the role of caregiver - but the behaviour of younger people also reveals a trade-off between the costs and benefits of assistance. With a definition of help focused on the tasks of daily living, only one major explanation for the differences remains: asymmetry in adjustment to the other child's behavior, given individual and family characteristics.