The Effects of Providing Childcare on Grandmothers’ Employment and Mental Health in Japan

Childcare

J22

In this paper, we examine the relationship between childcare given by a grandmother and her employment and mental health, using the 2005–2009 waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Middle-Aged and Older Adults, a large and nationally representative panel survey of those aged 50-59 in 2005. We find that when a grandmother provides childcare to grandchildren under the age of 6, the probability of her being employed is reduced by 3.8 percentage points, after we control for time-invariant individual heterogeneity. For those working grandmothers, caring for small grandchildren reduces hours worked per week by just 0.79, and days per week by just 0.069, reductions that are small in magnitude. We also observe that caregiving for small grandchildren is insignificantly related to any psychological distress of grandmothers.