Labor Market Consequences of Grandparenthood

Won-tak Joo, Felix Elwert, Martin D. Munk

Sociological Science August 9, 2024
10.15195/v11.a22


Little is known about the labor market consequences of becoming a grandparent. We estimate grandparenthood effects on labor supply and earnings using detailed multigenerational data from Danish population registers. Results show that the consequences of grandparenthood are unequally distributed and starkly patterned. Becoming a grandparent reduces hours worked and income, especially for grandmothers, more so when the grandchild is born to a daughter, and most when the grandmother’s daughter gives birth as a teenager. Grandfathers also experience a reduction in hours worked (but not income) from their daughter’s teen birth, but the reduction is much smaller than among grandmothers. The effects of a daughter’s teen birth are further amplified for low-income grandmothers. Our results imply that childbearing has multigenerational consequences that are structured by gendered caregiving, the caregiving needs of the parent generation, and the delegating capacity of the grandparent generation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Won-tak Joo: Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida
E-mail: wjoo@ufl.edu

Felix Elwert: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
E-mail: elwert@wisc.edu

Martin D. Munk: School of Health and Welfare, Halmstad University; SEC, Department of Sociology, Uppsala University
E-mail: mdmunk@gmail.com; Martin.David.Munk@hh.se

Acknowledgements: We thank Kasper Lolk for outstanding research assistance; Peter Fallesen, Jingying He, Michael Sobel, and audiences at the University of Chicago for discussions and advice; and Statistics Denmark for redacting public replication code and data setup. This research received support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark, Social Sciences (#0602-02227B); Helse Foundation (Helsefonden); the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University; the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development through the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (#T1 R01HD102125 and #T32 HD007014-42) and the Berkeley Population Center at the University of California, Berkeley (#P2CHD073964); and the National Institute on Aging through the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (#P30AG017266) and the Berkeley Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging (#5P30AG012839) and the Berkeley Population Center (#R01AG058940) at the University of California, Berkeley as well as a Romnes Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Because our data-use agreement prohibits direct sharing of our analytic data and original code, we share minimally redacted (removal of identifiers) analytic code and instructions to access our replication package at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OV3IEK. Interested parties may apply to Statistics Denmark (https://www.dst.dk/en/TilSalg/Forskningsservice/Dataadgang/) for access to the replication package.

  • Citation: Joo, Won-tak, Felix Elwert, and Martin D. Munk. 2024. “Labor Market Consequences of Grandparenthood” Sociological Science 11: 600-625.
  • Received: January 18, 2024
  • Accepted: June 12, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a22


, , , , ,

No reactions yet.

Write a Reaction


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

SiteLock