Two new articles published

Cologne Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology

A new paper, authored by Alina Schmitz and Rasmus Hoffmann, published in the Special Issue “Sociology of Age and Ageing: Theoretical and Empirical Challenges (Re-)Visited”, examines how children’s educational success affects their parents’ well-being in later life.

The study examines how children’s educational mobility relates to their parents’ life satisfaction. We find that parents with upwardly mobile children report higher life satisfaction than those with non-mobile children. The effect is strongest among lower-educated parents and increases with each additional upwardly mobile child. While emotional closeness and support matter for well-being overall, they do not fully explain this link. Educational mobility thus emerges as a new category of social inequality in later life, where children’s educational capital shapes not only their own prospects but also their parents’ quality of life.

The paper is available here (open access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11577-025-01021-0

Journal for Gerontology and Geriatrics

In a second article, Alina Schmitz examines whether parental education is related to income among older workers and whether this association varies across welfare regimes. While education is often viewed as a social equalizer, family background may still influence economic outcomes in later life. The study explores how societal contexts moderate inequalities related to family origins.

Using wave 9 (2021/2022) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the analysis focuses on individuals aged 50–65 years from 8 countries, grouped into social democratic (Sweden, Denmark, Finland) and conservative (Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg) regimes. The outcome is annual earnings from (self-)employment and the key predictor is parental education. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions were run separately by regime, controlling for job characteristics and sociodemographic covariates.
Parental education was unrelated to income in social democratic regimes but middle and high parental education (compared to low parental education) was positively associated with income in conservative regimes. Inequalities in financial well-being in later life cannot be fully understood without considering intergenerational dynamics and the broader institutional context in which they unfold. Income in later life is shaped by family origin at least in conservative welfare regimes.
The paper is available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00391-025-02475-9