SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION IN OLD-AGE AND INE QUALITY OF INFORMAL SUPPORT

The social life of the elderly is mostly painted in dark colours. On t he other side, research on ageing focusses more and more on the extrao rdinary differentiation of living conditions in old age. This latter r esearch perspective is strongly confirmed by the empirical findings re ported here for the domain of personal networks and support relationsh ips. They rely on analyses with three datasets, the ''Allbus 1986'' an d the ''German Welfare Surveys'' of 1984 and 1988, all of them being r epresentative of the former Federal Republic of Germany, Beside the pr esent marital status and household composition, former familial decisi ons and events in the life course proved to be especially important fo r elderly couples, widows or divorced persons in being enmeshed in net works of contact and social support. Parent-child-relationships show c onsiderable gender-specific differences: they are interpreted as conse quences of a life-long division of labour between men and women leadin g to much stronger relationships of mothers than of fathers to their c hildren. The lack of a partner and of children are gaps within the sup port network which most of the elderly obviously cannot compensate by other relationships. They are the dominant factors for a polarization of accessible support in old age which a larger proportion of quite we ll-integrated people and a smaller part with only precarious support n etworks. The very dominant concentration of support expectations on th ese two kinds of relationships is softened only in the case of older p eople with higher education.