Is Caring for Grandchildren Good for Grandparents' Health? Evidence From a Fourteen-wave Nationwide Survey in Japan.

BACKGROUND

Enhanced female labor force participation is raising the importance of grandparents' caring for their grandchildren. However, previous studies have reported mixed results of the association between grandchild care and grandparents' health.

METHODS

Longitudinal data of 33,204 individuals born between 1946 and 1955 were collected from a 14-wave nationwide panel survey conducted from 2005 to 2018. We examined how caring for at least one co-residing grandchild aged <6 years was associated with grandparents' psychological distress (defined by five or higher Kessler 6 score) and poor self-rated health in pooled cross-sectional, fixed-effects, and 3-year follow-up logistic models.

RESULTS

While pooled cross-sectional models showed a positive association between grandchild care and grandparents' health, the fixed-effects or follow-up logistic models did not find any significant association between them. In the case of grandmothers, the odds ratio of reporting psychological distress in response to caring for grandchildren was 0.98 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.89-1.08) and 1.04 (95% CI, 0.85-1.27) observed from fixed-effects and 3-year follow-up models, respectively, compared to 0.86 (95% CI, 0.81-0.91) in the pooled cross-sectional model. Similar patterns were observed for self-rated health for grandmothers, while grandfathers' health outcomes were not sensitive to grandchild care. These results contrasted with those of caring for parents, which had almost consistently a negative association with grandparents' health.

CONCLUSION

The results suggest that caring for grandchildren does not have a beneficial or detrimental effect on grandparents' health.