New, more precise estimates show most American grandchildren live close to a grandparent, with implications for families' well-being and for how much time and money generations share.
Cornell researchers' analysis found that nearly half of U.S. grandchildren (47%) live within 10 miles of a grandparent. Of those, significant numbers live even closer: 21% live between 1 and 5 miles, and 13% live within a walkable distance of 1 mile. As many grandchildren live within 1 mile of their grandparents as live 500 miles or more away.
Families living closer to grandparents tend to have lower socioeconomic status, the researchers found, with parents who on average have less education and lower incomes, and are less likely to be married. Those households help grandparents more, and receive more help from grandparents, but distance does not affect the amount of money that families exchange.
"Substantial numbers of grandchildren live very close to a grandparent," said Rachel Dunifon, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology. "Additionally, our results reveal that the characteristics of families living very close to grandparents differ from the characteristics of those living just a little farther away."
Dunifon is the co-author of "Grandchildren's Spatial Proximity to Grandparents and Intergenerational Support in the United States," published June 3 in Demographic Research, with Olivia Healy '12, an assistant professor of economics at Elon University.
Most prior research examined less detailed measures of distance between grandparents and grandchildren, measuring "close" proximity as within 25-30 miles, and therefore not identifying significant variation among the large number of children who live within this range. The work also provides more up-to-date analysis than previous estimates of grandchild-grandparent proximity, which date to the 1990s.
The new study leveraged a nationally representative U.S. sample from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a long-running longitudinal survey including detailed geographical location data measured at the census block level, which allowed for a very precise measurement of distance between grandparents and grandchildren. The researchers analyzed nearly 2,000 households with at least one child under 18 at home and at least one living grandparent living elsewhere.
"This more fine-grained spatial data reveals sizeable variation at the closest range of the geographic scale, including details missed in analyses where those living within larger geographic distances were grouped together," Dunifon said.
As might be expected, families living closer together spend more time together. But the rate is much higher among families that live within 1 mile of each other than for those just 5 or 10 miles farther away.
"This suggests that family members living in very close proximity are highly embedded in each other's lives," Dunifon said. "This is a group worthy of further study, to understand how they select these living arrangements and what the implications are for family functioning and well-being."
The researchers speculated that grandparents who live far away from their grandchildren may make up for the limited time spent together by giving them more money - but results showed that was not the case. The authors speculate that this may be because families who live farther from grandparents have higher incomes and more education, and likely are more self-sufficient.
Overall, grandparents give more time and money to grandchildren's families than they receive. Among households 1 to 5 miles apart, for example, grandparents on average gave 186 hours of help and $800 of financial support, while receiving 104 hours and $500. Prior research that did not consider grandchildren had calculated equal transfers.
Because a significant amount of the time grandparents contribute likely involves child care, the researchers said, their more detailed proximity analysis potentially has implications for the well-being of all three generations. Grandparents living nearby could benefit grandchildren by providing stable child care; their parents, who might need support while working; and the grandparents themselves, since there is evidence that spending time with grandchildren improves well-being.
"We highlight the significant numbers of grandchildren living in very close proximity to their grandparents," Dunifon said, "and demonstrate that geographic distance, at a very fine scale, is linked to important time investments to and from households."
