Research on intergenerational transmissions of poverty and inequality has tended to focus on material transfers. This article refocuses attention on the intersection of material and psychosocial transfers, which reveals temporal and gendered complexities. It examines three key ideas emerging from the life course literature (relationality, intersectionality and intergenerationality) to shed light on how these complexities might be addressed. It is argued that a human well-being lens is potentially useful as a unifying framework to integrate these ideas, as it interrogates what living well means over the life course and how it is constructed relationally.