Older immigrants are more likely to share residence with their adult children and other family members than are U.S.-born older adults. Because socioeconomic factors only partially explain these differences and direct measures of cultural preferences are seldom available, the persistently high rates of intergenerational coresidence among the older foreign-born are often interpreted as driven by cultural preferences and/or a lack of assimilation. To challenge this interpretation, this study investigates the extent to which older immigrants' living arrangements deviate from those of older adults in their home countries. The analysis combines data on immigrants from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey (ACS) with census data from three major immigrant-sending countries: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam. Despite persistent differences from U.S.-born whites, coresidence in later life is significantly less common than in the sending countries among the older foreign-born who migrated as young adults, and especially among those who migrated as children. The older foreign-born who migrated after age 50, however, are more likely to coreside and less likely to live independently than the older adults in their home countries. The similarity of these patterns across the three immigrant subgroups suggests that the unusually high coresidence among late-life immigrants is driven by U.S. family reunification policy and not simply by cultural influences.

Toward a background of young people’s decreasing housing affordability and parents’ increasing involvement in intergenerational housing support, this study investigates how such support influences parents’ expectation of future care from adult children. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we found that, in general, middle-aged/older adults who provided adult children financial housing support were more likely to expect old-age care from them. The help-receiving child was more likely to be an expected caregiver than the other children in multi-children families. Moreover, the reciprocal relationship was most prominent among the 1950s cohort, compared with the pre-1950s and the post-1950s cohorts. Our study broadly contributes to understanding how modernization reshapes intergenerational relationships and family members’ expectations of commitments toward each other. It also informs the design of a comprehensive multi-level care system for older adults in China.

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