Geographic Proximity Between Adult Children and Their Parents in Canada: The Role of Childhood Parental Income

Abstract

Adult children's geographic distance from their ageing parents has important implications for understanding intergenerational family spatiality, caregiving, and labour mobility. Though many studies delve into the determinants of intergenerational residential proximity, few analyse household characteristics from childhood – including parental income during childhood. Using administrative tax data from the Canadian Intergenerational Income Database, this study tracks a cohort of individuals initially observed as teenagers co-residing with their parents in the mid-1980s and the geographic distance between children and parents from 1997 to 2019 when adult children moved through middle age and their parents through old age. Findings show that the geographic distance between adult children and their parents remains positively and significantly associated with the household parental income of adult children when they were teens, and accounting for other socioeconomic characteristics and adult children's own family income in adulthood. These results underscore the effects of characteristics dating back to childhood and their potential implications for intergenerational informal care provision and family ties. Lesser geographic distance between adult children and ageing parents is also correlated with parents' ages and the presence of grandchildren, which align with expectations regarding care needs.