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Transfers of time and money from people aged 50 or more may be made upward to living parents or downward to children, or both. The role of family in such transfers has strong implications for the level of social support offered by the state. This article takes a qualitative approach to reveal the value frameworks and motivations behind these transfers, based on a subsample of 30 respondents from a larger Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) survey. Family solidarity is still a strong norm in Australian society but adherence to this norm is flexible. Most Australians expect the state to supplement interfamilial assistance.

Those aiming to respond to the recognised shortage in quantitative skills within the UK social sciences have increasingly focused on the content of undergraduate degree programmes. Problems occur when 'quantitative methods (QM)' are generally confined to a dedicated module, detached from substantive topics. This model makes it hard for students to understand or engage with the contribution of quantitative research to their discipline and can perpetuate negative perceptions of quantitative training. We suggest a solution to this problem is 'quantitative embedding', in which quantitative evidence and methods are incorporated into substantive teaching in the social sciences. We illustrate quantitative embedding with case studies from an ESRC funded project based in The University of Manchester, where teaching partnerships have developed curriculum innovations in Sociology and Politics. The paper then discusses the challenges of disseminating quantitative embedding, highlighting the need to bridge separate 'communities of practice' that can isolate quantitative specialists.

One strategy to reduce the economic impact of structural ageing is to increase and/or extend the workforce participation of older workers. Currently, a large proportion of this group consists of post‐World War II baby‐boomers (1946–1965) whose characteristics, experiences and attitudes differ markedly from their predecessors. Maintaining good health underpins strategies to extend workforce participation among baby‐boomers but there is little hard evidence supporting the assumption that baby‐boomers are generally in good health compared to previous generations and will, therefore, be able to work longer. Using a dataset that includes biomedical and self‐reported health for a representative sample of South Australian baby‐boomers, we analyse the extent to which current labour force participation is mediated by health. We find that health is a significant factor in workforce exits. Respondents with fair‐to‐poor self‐rated health, or with diabetes, arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cardiovascular disease, were more likely to be retired or unable to work, and around 10 per cent of older baby‐boomers (born 1946–1955) who have left the workforce rate their health as poor or fair. The data suggest that these patterns are likely to be replicated in younger baby‐boomers (born 1956–1965).