Saraceno's edited collection of papers presented at a conference in Berlin is based, in part, on the activities of an EU-funded EQUALSOC network which she coordinates. As Saraceno notes, until relatively recently most work in the area of intergenerational relations in ageing societies was conducted in the U.S. However, as this volume shows, European scholarship is catching up; in particular, there has been a flurry of activity since the introduction in 2004 of the comparative Surveys of Ageing, Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The book largely focuses on four key areas: (i) the impact of welfare states on families in ageing societies; (ii) the debate on crowding-out versus crowding-in, i.e. whether or not public services reduce family support or activate it; (iii) the effect of divorce on intergenerational relations; and (iv) migration and transnational care.

The transnational care arrangements of migrants, and how migration affects caregiving relationships, is a relatively new area of study and so the three chapters on this topic (11, 12, and 13) provide a welcome contribution. The authors find evidence of upward transfers, i.e. migrants are often net givers of support to ageing parents in the countries of origin. Saraceno emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between contact and support: in chapter 9, Albertini and Saraceno note that, although the impact of divorce on contact and proximity seems to be negative, several studies, including their own, have found its impact on support to be either positive or neutral. That is, older parents who live alone, whether they are divorced or widowed, appear to receive more help from their children than do their still-married counterparts. Similarly, colleagues and I have also found this to be the case for Britain and Italy: need seems to be more important than marital status in determining whether adult children provide support. Much previous research on the detrimental effect of family disruptions (divorce in particular) on late-life support has been based on those parents in mid-life or in young elderly age groups and has focused on contact with children, not support. As the authors repeatedly point out, only at the oldest ages (75 and above) are older parents more likely to receive than to give help. Once frail older parents need assistance, family does appear to provide help regardless of other parental characteristics.

The book's chapters on crowding-out versus crowding-in (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) largely confirm what other European studies have found: that there is little evidence of crowding out (i.e. providing public services is not detrimental to family support). Regarding the impact of social policies on intergenerational relations the book is less successful. Hagestad's chapter argues powerfully for ‘generational interdependence’ in family policy but there is no clear definition of what kinds of policies (or public services) cover care both for the young and the old, and little analysis of the impact of such policies on family relations. Typologies used to classify countries are mostly based on those established by previous studies, with no clear attempt made to link types of family policies to intergenerational outcomes (with the exception of Keck's chapter, which discusses care policies for children and older adults in different countries and their link to country-specific variations in care arrangements for older people).

Finally, the widespread use of SHARE data in this book (and in other European work) to examine intergenerational relations, including support, merits some comment. Given the scarcity of data on the family lives of older people in many European countries, SHARE, which has been designed to be comparable with the U.S. Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), is a welcome addition. However, despite its widespread use I have seen little evidence that scholars using this dataset have, where possible, compared it to nationally available sources. Such an omission is important given the low response rates for some countries (e.g., Switzerland and Belgium which have household response rates under 40%). Such comparisons should be a key aim of European networks as they bring together national-level experts.