The impact of grandparent caregiving on health, cognitive functioning and satisfaction with life of older people

Abstract

Grandparent caregiving is becoming common and plays an important role as one of the informal care in many countries. This study examines whether grandparent caregiving has a causal effect on grandparents’ health, cognitive functioning and satisfaction with life. To assess the causal effect, we estimate a fixed effects instrumental variable model by using the presence of a child aged 30-39 years and a married child as instruments. The estimation results reveal that grandparent caregiving has a positive effect. Grandparent caregiving is predicted to increase the probability of considering own health status as above average by 46.1%p, improve cognitive functioning by 10.256 points and overall satisfaction with quality of life by 20.047 points. In addition, the effect is noticeable among females as well as aged 55-74 years.