Population ageing has paved the way for important and lasting multigenerational bonds, particularly between grandparents and grandchildren. Proximity is a powerful enhancer of relations, and co-residence, by involving continual proximity and long-term commitment, is particularly facilitative of significant linkages between generations. Although co-residence has generally been decreasing in Western societies, in the last decades of the millennium, a trend reversal was identified in the proportion of multigenerational households in the USA. Using data drawn from the European Community Household Panel, 1994-2001, some descriptive insights are provided that were considered to be missing in regard to the sociodemographic composition of extended households with grandparents in Portugal. Additionally, this study finds a rising trend in the proportion of multigenerational households, specifically those that include both grandparents and grandchildren. Portugal is possibly the European country that has the highest probability of exhibiting this pattern of evolution, because of the combination of its being a welfare state with limited resources, its historical reliance on family solidarity and its high level of participation of women in the labor market. Co-residence is a type of intergenerational transfer that can benefit any of the generations involved, but the direction of its net flow is still open to debate. A breakdown is made of its trend into age, period and cohort effects, in order to contribute to the discussion of the relative importance of the different generations in the shared living arrangement. Our findings suggest a mixture of interests, as well as a predominant influence of contemporary circumstances in the observed trend. These contemporary circumstances may be persistent or transient, but co-residence with grandparents is certainly an enduring mechanism, which households use in order to meet their needs.

Intergenerational private transfers should be made important as a common occurrence in familialistic societies when establishing the identity of Southern European welfare state regimes. They function as a safety net and as a way of reinforcing the bonds amongst elements in a family. Although Portugal is undoubtedly a Southern European country, it is frequently ignored in comparative studies, and is assumed to share the characteristics of Spain and Italy. But do these countries really belong to a common, distinctive model? Portugal was included in the fourth wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in Europe, which provides a large sample for the study of intergenerational private transfers in this country. It also enables comparison with what happens elsewhere in Europe. We examine the upward and downward flows between generations and identify several important determinants of each type of transfers. Additionally, we show that the different types and directions of transfers are positively correlated, pointing to a self-reinforcement of transfer behaviour in families. We find that Portugal has an especially low probability of private transfers of time and money. After taking into consideration the household-level characteristics, none of the countries included in this study has a significantly lower probability of occurrence of any type of transfer than that of Portugal. A Southern European specific pattern of family transfers is only partially confirmed, yet Portugal and Spain do share the same model.

This study investigates the relationship between demography and inflation using panel cointegration for 24 countries during 1961-2014. It shows that the age structure of the population affects inflation. The answer to the question "is population aging inflationary or disinflationary?" depends on the stage of the demographic process and, particularly, on the consideration that the share of mature workers is increasing or decreasing. The empirical results support the existence of a long-run equilibrium function between inflation and the changes in the shares of the population under 20 years of age, young adults (20-34), middle-age people (35-64), and older-old people (75+). The panel least squares equations for inflation with population age shares growth, GDP growth, M2 growth, exchange rate growth, labour costs and recession dummy variables as exogenous regressors allow the identification of the population shares that have positive significant impact on inflation, and those that have negative significant effects on inflation.

Elderly, Extended household, Living arrangements, Nuclear household,