Grandparent caregiving and cognitive functioning among older people: evidence from Korea

Taehyun Ahn and Kyong Duk Choi
Additional contact information
Kyong Duk Choi: Sogang University

Review of Economics of the Household, 2019, vol. 17, issue 2, No 9, 553-586

Abstract: Abstract Caregiving for grandchildren is becoming common and plays an important role in the childcare system in many countries. This study examines whether caregiving for grandchildren has a causal effect on grandparents’ cognitive functioning, using a longitudinal survey of older Koreans. To assess the causal relationship, we estimate a fixed-effects instrumental variable model by using the presence of a married child and a child aged 31–40 years as instruments. The estimation results reveal that caregiving for grandchildren significantly improves grandparents’ cognitive functioning. Caregiving for grandchildren is predicted to improve global cognitive functioning score by 30.05%, orientation score by 19.85%, delayed recall score by 95.58%, and language ability score by 30.10%. In addition, the effect of grandparent caregiving is salient among females as well as lower-income and less educated groups. Our findings suggest that caregiving for grandchildren, which is one of the most common forms of informal care, may play a complementary role to formal care.

Keywords: Cognitive functioning; Caregiving for grandchildren; Informal care; Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-018-9413-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:reveho:v:17:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11150-018-9413-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-018-9413-5

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().