Who Becomes a Multigenerational Grandmother? Selection into Multigenerational Households

Thomas DeLeire, Michigan State University
Ariel Kalil, University of Chicago

Who becomes a multigenerational grandmother? Multigenerational coresidence is increasingly prevalent among adult single mothers with children. Research on the effects of multigenerational coresidence on children, however, is equivocal, though our recent study (DeLeire and Kalil, 2002) found that teenagers in multigenerational families have better educational and behavioral outcomes than even teenagers in 2-biological parent families. Understanding issues of who chooses to form a multigenerational household is necessary for understanding whether observed positive benefits of multigenerational coresidence are merely the result of selection. To address this question, we use data on a sample of 640 grandmothers from the NLSY-CS, 44% of whom have co-resided with their daughter and grandchild.