Trends in the prevalence of grandparents living with grandchild(ren) in selected European countries and the United States

Karen Glaser (), Rachel Stuchbury, Debora Price, Giorgio Gessa, Eloi Ribe and Anthea Tinker
Additional contact information
Karen Glaser: King’s College London
Rachel Stuchbury: University College London
Debora Price: University of Manchester
Giorgio Gessa: King’s College London
Eloi Ribe: King’s College London
Anthea Tinker: King’s College London

European Journal of Ageing, 2018, vol. 15, issue 3, No 3, 237-250

Abstract: Abstract Research from the United States has shown significant increases in the prevalence of three-generation households and in households consisting solely of grandparents and grandchildren. Such shifts in household composition, which are associated with socio-economic disadvantage, may reflect the activation of grandparents as a latent network of support in response to social and demographic changes such as rising partnership disruption. However, to date, little is known in Europe about trends in grandparent households or whether these households are also likely to be disadvantaged. Moreover, we know little about how the familistic and defamilised policy environments in Europe may affect the activation of such latent kin networks. Employing the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series—International and the Office for National Statistics’ Longitudinal Study for England and Wales, we used multivariate techniques to investigate changes in prevalence over time in co-residence with a grandchild across Austria, England and Wales, France, Greece, Portugal, Romania, and the United States. We expected increases in grandparent households in Portugal and Greece, familistic societies with few public alternatives to family support. However, only Romania (like the US) showed an increase in the percentage of people aged 40 and over co-residing with their grandchildren in three-generation households between the late 1970s and 2002. Given rises in poverty and limited support for low-income families in Romania, rises in grandparent coresidence may reflect a coping strategy among poorer families to increasing financial hardship. Regardless of the trends, grandparent households in all the countries studied remained associated with socio-economic disadvantage.

Keywords: Multigenerational household; Family support; Older people; Grandparents; IPUMS; ONS Longitudinal Study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10433-018-0474-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eujoag:v:15:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10433-018-0474-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... iences/journal/10433

DOI: 10.1007/s10433-018-0474-3

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Ageing is currently edited by Marja Aartsen, Susanne Iwarsson and Prof. Dr. Matthias Kliegel

More articles in European Journal of Ageing from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().