Does Transition to Retirement Increase Grandparental Childcare? Evidence from Europe

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Abstract

Due to rapidly aging populations retirement has become much stressed topic in Western countries. Although retiring may be a positive life course event for an individual, in public debate retirement is often perceived as a social and economic burden to society. Here we examined a potentially productive side of retirement and investigated whether retiring modifies the provision of grandchild care. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) collected between 2004 and 2015 from Europeans aged 50 and older, we employed within-person effects to study whether transition from employment to retirement is associated with changes in the frequency of childcare help grandparents provide to their adult children. According to the results an individual’s transition to retirement is positively associated with subsequent changes in provided grandchild care. The association was similar in different investigated country groups (Northern, Western, Eastern and Southern Europe), meaning that grandparents’ transition from employment to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care in all parts of Europe.

Authors

• Hans Hämäläinen, University of Turku

• Antti Tanskanen, University of Turku

• Mirkka Danielsbacka, University of Turku

• Aïda Solé Auró, Pompeu Fabra University