Health of grandparents raising their grandchildren

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION: A remarkable trend in American families is the growing number of grandparents who are raising grandchildren in their homes. Currently, in the course of a lifetime, about 1 in 10 U.S. grandparents assumes primary responsibility for the care of a grandchild for more than 6 months. Several prior studies have suggested that such caregiving has a negative effect on grandparent health and well being, and recent reports from clinicians suggest that overwhelming burdens of grandchild care are increasingly causing older people to neglect their own health and health care. However, few prior studies have convincingly demonstrated the negative impact of caregiving on grandparent health, and no research has documented the reported impact of caregiving upon grandparent health care use. The proposed study addresses this void, using four waves of a large, nationally representative panel survey of older Americans (the Health and Retirement Survey). Because grandchildren move in and out of grandparent?s homes with some frequency, using a panel data source makes it possible to observe the same individuals before and after they become grandparent caregivers. The proposed study examines the following issues: (1) What is the impact of grandparent caregiving on grandparent health status, health behaviors, and health care utilization patterns? (2) How do these impacts differ for grandparents heading households with different family configurations? and (3) To what extent can these impacts be mitigated by the availability of tangible and social resources? Caregiving grandparents perform an important social role in providing care for their vulnerable grandchildren. Evidence suggests that they do so despite limited personal resources, and at considerable personal cost. To the extent that factors influencing the health of caregiving grandparents can be documented, it may be possible to develop better policies and programs to support grandparent health.