Grandparenthood Penalty in Agriculture: Grandchild Caregiving and Farm Performance

Wenyuan Hua, Liangguo Luo and Xueqin Zhu

Journal of Development Studies, 2026, vol. 62, issue 7, 1207-1224

Abstract: Grandparenting is common globally, but it entails substantial costs of transferring time, financial and emotional resources and is said to cause a variety of labour market consequences for caregivers. This paper examines the effect of grandparents’ grandchild caregiving on their farm performance in rural China where grandparenting has historically been prevalent. Using a constructed panel data on potential grandparents’ grandparenting status from the National Fixed Point Survey, we exploit the instrumental variable approach to estimate both the extensive and intensive margin effect of grandparenting on farm performance. Our results suggest that, although grandchild caregiving did not encourage caregivers to quit farming, it resulted in a substantial decrease in caregivers’ total farm income, net farm income and crop yields. We also find supportive evidence for the plausible mechanisms behind the identified farming losses: the grandparenting-induced health damaging effect particularly on grandmothers, the agricultural-investment restriction effect, and the farmland downsizing effect, both of which proves to be the important determinant of agricultural production. Overall, our study provides robust evidence in support of the existence of grandparenthood penalty in agriculture sectors, which is of special importance to global agricultural production.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2025.2604692

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