This thematic collection seeks to reflect and push forward the current state of the art in the study of grandparenthood and grandparenting in Italy in a comparative European perspective. Starting ...from the demography of grandparenthood, intergenerational transfers, contacts and living proximity between grandparents, parents and children and the characteristics of such exchanges are analysed. Furthermore, the consequences of grandparenting and especially of grandchild care provision in terms of fertility behaviour and work participation and well-being are investigated. The research articles aim to shed light on the complexity of factors which shape the effects of grandparents’ availability and the behaviour and well-being of each of the three generations involved.
Abstract
Objectives
Provision of grandchild care has been found to be associated with a youthful subjective age. Yet, previous studies on this topic were cross-sectional and ignored the increasing ...proportions of older people growing old without the opportunity to become a grandparent. This study investigates the effects of childcare to grandchildren and to other children on subjective age using panel data.
Methods
We exploit the longitudinal nature of data from the German Ageing Survey (DEAS) to examine the association between grandparental childcare and care to other children with subjective age, using fixed-effects regression analyses on a sample of 50–85 years old individuals (men: N = 11,151; n = 3,984; women: N = 10,687; n = 3,746, where N is the number of observations and n is the number of individuals).
Results
The results from cross-sectional analyses show a “rejuvenating effect” of provision of both types of childcare in later life, especially for women. However, longitudinal analyses find very small and statistically insignificant effects.
Discussion
We show for the first time that both grandchild care and childcare outside the grandparent–grandchild relationship are associated with a youthful subjective age for older people. However, these associations are likely due to selection effects, that is, unobserved characteristics of people that make them more likely to engage in childcare and are also associated with subjective age. Our results warn against causal interpretation of associations found in previous studies, but also open up new research questions on the role played by childcare other than to grandchildren.
Research on immigrants’ assimilation is widespread both in the U.S. and Europe. While it has been extensively studied how immigrants fare compared to natives on socioeconomic indicators, few studies ...have focussed on immigrants’ perception of their position. In this paper we focus on comparing life satisfaction of immigrants and natives across Europe and on the role of social embeddedness. Using data from the first six rounds (2002–2012) of the European Social Survey, a repeated cross-sectional survey, we find that life satisfaction among immigrants is lower than among natives even though differences diminish over generations. For first generation immigrants part of the life satisfaction gap is explained by the lower level of social embeddedness they have compared to natives. We also find that social embeddedness is a key explanatory factor for life satisfaction for both immigrants and natives. For two out of the three indicators of social embeddedness that we consider we however find different patterns of association with life satisfaction for immigrants compared to natives.
Objective
This article offers a contribution to the fertility literature by considering the role of risk tolerance in the fertility decision‐making process.
Background
Despite a long tradition in ...fertility research emphasizing the great uncertainty underlying the decision to have children, the role of risk tolerance has been overlooked. Elaborating on previous theoretical approaches including those that have considered children as a “security” or as a “risky investment,” whether and how risk tolerance is related to fertility outcomes has been analyzed.
Method
The analyses are based on longitudinal data from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth carried out by the Bank of Italy and rely on a lottery question to measure risk tolerance. Probit models for the probability of having the first and second child are estimated.
Results
Results indicate that the most risk‐tolerant individuals have the lowest probability to have a (an additional) child. This is consistent with the theoretical approaches that conceptualize children as an insurance and an immanent value. These results are particularly evident for low‐income individuals.
Implications
The findings point to the importance of considering risk tolerance in fertility research to gain a more complete understanding of heterogeneities in fertility behaviors.
Propensity score matching (PSM) and propensity score weighting (PSW) are popular tools to estimate causal effects in observational studies. We address two open issues: how to estimate propensity ...scores and assess covariate balance. Using simulations, we compare the performance of PSM and PSW based on logistic regression and machine learning algorithms (CART; Bagging; Boosting; Random Forest; Neural Networks; naive Bayes). Additionally, we consider several measures of covariate balance (Absolute Standardized Average Mean (ASAM) with and without interactions; measures based on the quantile‐quantile plots; ratio between variances of propensity scores; area under the curve (AUC)) and assess their ability in predicting the bias of PSM and PSW estimators. We also investigate the importance of tuning of machine learning parameters in the context of propensity score methods. Two simulation designs are employed. In the first, the generating processes are inspired to birth register data used to assess the effect of labor induction on the occurrence of caesarean section. The second exploits more general generating mechanisms. Overall, among the different techniques, random forests performed the best, especially in PSW. Logistic regression and neural networks also showed an excellent performance similar to that of random forests. As for covariate balance, the simplest and commonly used metric, the ASAM, showed a strong correlation with the bias of causal effects estimators. Our findings suggest that researchers should aim at obtaining an ASAM lower than 10% for as many variables as possible. In the empirical study we found that labor induction had a small and not statistically significant impact on caesarean section.
This article investigates whether and how having a child impacts an individual's subjective well-being, while taking into account heterogeneity in family attitudes. People with different family ...orientations have different values, gender attitudes, preferences toward career and family, and expectations about how childbearing can affect their subjective well-being. These differences impact fertility decisions and the effect of parenthood on an individual's life satisfaction. We define three groups of people based on their family orientations: Traditional, Mixed, and Modern. Applying propensity score matching on longitudinal data (British Household Panel Survey), we create groups of individuals with very similar socioeconomic characteristics and family orientations before childbearing. We then compare those who have one child with those who are childless, and those who have two children with those who have only one child. We show that parents are significantly more satisfied than nonparents, and this effect is stronger among men than among women. For men, we do not find significant differences across family orientations groups in the effect of the birth of the first child on life satisfaction. Among women, only Traditional mothers seem to be more satisfied than their childless counterparts. Women who have a second child are never more satisfied than those who have only one child, regardless of their family orientations. Traditional and Mixed men experience a gain in life satisfaction when they have a second child, but this effect is not found for Modern men.
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 originated in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 and rapidly spread in more than 100 countries. Researchers in different fields have been working on ...finding explanations for the unequal impact of the virus and deaths from the associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) across geographical areas. Demographers and other social scientists have hinted at the importance of demographic factors, such as age structure and intergenerational relationships. Our aim is to reflect on the possible link between intergenerational relationships and spread and lethality of COVID-19 in a critical way.We show that with available aggregate data it is not possible to draw robust evidence to support these links. In fact, despite a higher prevalence of intergenerational coresidence and contacts that is broadly positively associated with COVID-19 case fatality rates at the country level, the opposite is generally true at the subnational level. While this inconsistent evidence demonstrates neither the existence nor the absence of a causal link between intergenerational relationships and the severity of COVID-19, we warn against simplistic interpretations of the available data, which suffer from many shortcomings. We conclude by arguing that intergenerational relationships are not only about physical contacts between family members. Theoretically, different forms of intergenerational relationships may have causal effects of opposite sign on the diffusion of COVID-19. Policies should also take into account that intergenerational ties are a source of instrumental and emotional support, which may favor compliance to the lockdown and “phase-2” restrictions and may buffer their negative consequences on mental health.
Objectives: Guided by the acknowledged importance of measures of aging alternative to chronological age, we explored the association between subjective age, on the one hand, and having grandchildren ...and provision of grandchild care, on the other, by gender and age groups. Method: Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; N = 1,701 men and 2,395 women aged 50-85) and linear regression models were used to test two hypotheses. Results: Grandparents feel older than their grandchildless counterparts at younger ages, but such association is reversed in later life if they look after their grandchildren. A cumulative negative association between subjective age and both having grandchildren and providing grandchild care holds for older women. Discussion: This study extends prior research by examining age and gender differences in factors associated with subjective age. The findings suggest that grandparenthood is central in shaping the personal experience of aging. Future studies should address the causality of the factors analyzed.
Abstract
Objectives
Although the majority of older people are grandparents, little is known on whether and how the transition into grandparenthood affects their well-being. Moreover, evidence on ...whether the order of the transition, the time since grandchild’s birth, and the sociodemographic characteristics of the offspring modify the grandparental well-being is scarce. Taking into account these factors, our study examines the association between becoming a grandparent and subsequent well-being.
Methods
Our study is based on grandparents aged 50 and older from Waves 4–6 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Using longitudinal analyses, we investigate associations between becoming a grandparent and subsequent life satisfaction, positive affect, and depression controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as health and well-being at baseline. Furthermore, we explore the role of modifying factors such as whether the grandchild was first-born, the time since transition, and sociodemographic characteristics of the offspring who became a parent.
Results
Becoming a grandparent has a positive effect on well-being only among women who became grandmothers for the first time and via their daughters. Moreover, this effect is particularly strong in the proximity of the birth of the grandchild. No effects were found among first-time grandfathers. Having an additional grandchild does not affect well-being of grandparents, regardless of the offspring’s characteristics.
Discussion
Transitioning to grandparenthood per se does not affect well-being. More research is needed to further investigate if interpersonal relationships and changes in roles triggered by becoming a grandparent could help promote well-being in later life.
Against the background of rapid population ageing, studying social participation in later life is of particular relevance within the framework of active ageing. Although caring for grandchildren has ...taken a central role for older persons due to unprecedented overlap between grandparents’ and their grandchildren’s lives, whether the relationship between grandparental childcare and social activities is characterised by cumulation or competition remains under-explored. Grandparental childcare may increase the purpose in life for grandparents, stimulating their social participation, or it may impose time and energy constraints on it. This study aims to assess the effect of providing grandchild care on participation in social activities for people aged 50–85 in Europe. Using an instrumental variable approach on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we find no significant negative effects of grandchild care on engagement in at least one social activity. However, regular provision of grandchild care has a significant negative effect on the number of activities in which grandmothers participate. When considering the activities separately by type we also find, for grandmothers only, a negative effect on volunteering, engagement in educational or training courses and participation in political or community-related organisation.
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