When Does It Matter? The Effect of Three-generational Household Arrangement on Children’s Well-Being across Developmental Stages

Jingying He () and Jia Wang
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Jingying He: University of Pennsylvania
Jia Wang: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Child Indicators Research, 2021, vol. 14, issue 6, No 16, 2493 pages

Abstract: Abstract Recent social-demographic trends predict a growing importance of grandparents’ role in family wellbeing. Over the past years, the three-generational household arrangement has become more prevalent in western countries. However, the implications of three-generational household arrangements for children’s development are less known, particularly over children’s different ages. Using five waves of data from the British Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), we examine whether a three-generational arrangement influences children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes and how these effects vary from early childhood to adolescence. Fixed effects regressions results reveal that three-generational household arrangement has a negative effect on children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes in early childhood (ages 3 and 5), and such arrangement matters less for children during middle childhood and adolescence (ages 7, 11 and 14). This study illustrates heterogeneous influences of multigenerational household arrangement on children’s wellbeing across different developmental stages and calls for more thorough research on various multigenerational interactions and mechanisms that may underly such changing patterns.

Keywords: Child behavioral problem; Child cognitive ability; Developmental stage; Three-generational household arrangement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1007/s12187-021-09857-6

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