Are the grandparents alright? The health consequences of grandparental childcare provision

Peter Eibich and Xianhua Zai
Additional contact information
Xianhua Zai: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2022-023, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the causal effect of childcare provision on grandparents’ health in the US. We propose the sex ratio among older adults’ children as a novel instrument for grandparental childcare provision. Our instrument is rooted in the demographic literature on grandparenthood and exploits that parents of daughters transition to grandparenthood earlier and invest more in their grandchildren than parents of sons. We estimate 2SLS regressions using data from the Health and Retirement Study. The results suggest that childcare provision is not beneficial for grandparents’ health and may even be detrimental for physical functioning and subjective health.

Keywords: America; child care; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2022-023.pdf (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are the grandparents alright? The health consequences of grandparental childcare provision (2024)
Working Paper: Are the Grandparents Alright?: The Health Consequences of Grandparental Childcare Provision (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2022-023

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2022-023

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