DISCUSSION PAPER SERIESIZA DP No. 14081

The Effect of Grandchildren on theHappiness of Grandparents: Does theGrandparent’s Child’s Gender Matter?
Eiji Yamamura
Giorgio Brunello

JANUARY 2021

DISCUSSION PAPER SERIESIZA DP No. 14081

The Effect of Grandchildren on theHappiness of Grandparents: Does theGrandparent’s Child’s Gender Matter?
Eiji Yamamura

Seinan Gakuin University

Giorgio Brunello

University of Padova and IZAJANUARY 2021

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IZA DP No. 14081

JANUARY 2021

ABSTRACTThe Effect of Grandchildren on theHappiness of Grandparents: Does theGrandparent’s Child’s Gender Matter?
Using a representative sample from Japan and a difference-in-differences strategy, weinvestigate whether the effect of having grandchildren on the happiness of grandparents
varies with the gender of their (own) single child. In line with our expectations, we find thatmaternal grandmothers have more to lose or less to gain from having grandchildren thanpaternal grandmothers. In contrast, grandfathers’ changes in happiness do not depend on
their own child’s gender. This result is explained by the fact that grandmothers are more
likely to be involved in child-rearing when their daughter has a child.
JEL Classification:

J13, J14, J16, I31

Keywords:

grandparents, grandchildren, happiness, gender differences

Corresponding author:
Giorgio Brunello
Department of Economics and Management
University of Padova
via del Santo 33
35123 Padova
Italy
E-mail: giorgio.brunello@unipd.it

1. Introduction
Developed countries are rapidly becoming aging societies. With female labor
participation being increasingly promoted, grandparents are often expected tocontribute to the care of grandchildren (see Takaku 2019),1 raising questions as
to whether the latter contributes positively or negatively to the grandparents’
wellbeing.
Recent empirical studies have explored the effects of grandchild care on
grandparents’ health status (Di Gessa et al. 2016a, 2016b; Ku et al. 2012;
Reinkowski 2013), mortality (Christiansen 2014), participation in social
activities (Arpino and Bordone 2017), and cognitive functioning (Ahn and Choi
2018).
An issue not considered so far is whether the relationship between the presenceof grandchildren and the wellbeing of grandparents is significantly affected by
the strength of inter-generational ties within a family.2 The current study aims
to fill this gap by focusing on Japan and by investigating whether the effect ofgrandchildren on grandmothers varies with whether it is their daughter vs theirdaughter-in-law who has a child.
This question is motivated by the observation that, because of the stronger ties
between a mother and a daughter, maternal grandmothers in Japan are more
1

Studies on the interaction between childcare from grandmothers and the labor supply of
mothers include Posadas and Vidal-Fernández (2012), Aparicio-Fenoll and Vidal-Fernandez(2015), Ho (2015), Rupert and Zanella (2018), and Garcia-Moran and Kuehn (2018).
2
An exception is Pushkar et al. (2014), who report that older parents of only daughters are moresatisfied with life and have more intimate family relations than older childless adults and parentsof only sons.

2likely to be involved in the responsibilities of child-rearing than paternal
grandmothers (Holloway 2010; Suzuki et al. 2009). Therefore, they are more
exposed to the disadvantages of having grandchildren when their daughter hasa child. In contrast, we expect no difference between the happiness of maternaland paternal grandfathers, because of their lesser involvement in child-rearing.3
We address this question by analyzing a sample of Japanese individuals aged 55
to 68 who have a single child, exploiting the fact that, for these generations, theassumption that the gender of the firstborn is random is plausible. We compare
maternal and paternal grandmothers and show that the former have on average
more to lose or less to gain than the latter in terms of happiness from having
grandchildren. This is consistent with the observation that, in Japan, maternal
grandmothers are more likely to bear the disadvantages of having grandchildren
than paternal grandmothers. For grandfathers, we find that changes in happinessdue to the presence of grandchildren do not vary with own child’s gender.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a brief
overview of family relations in contemporary Japan. Section 3 introduces the
hypotheses to be tested, Section 4 describes the data, and Section 5 discusses
the empirical approach. The results are presented in Section 6. Conclusions
follow.

3

The gender difference in the time allocated to housework is well-known (for Japan, see
Yamamura and Tsutsui (2021)) and also includes childcare (García-Mainar et al. 2011). Afterreaching retirement age, females typically increase their provision of grandchild care more thanmales (Feng and Zhang 2018).

3

2. Overview of contemporary family in Japan
In Japan, it is usual for the wife to spend more time on housework tasks than thehusband does. This gap increases after childbirth (Yamamura and Tsutsui 2021),
which can be explained by gender identity (Akerlof and Kranton 2000), because
child-rearing is considered as housework and the province of the wife.
Vogel (1996) argued that Japanese mothers used to rely on other family andcommunity members for child-rearing. Although the situation has changed dueto the decline in the total fertility rate since the 1970s and the emergence of thenuclear family,4 family ties still play a crucial role in the help mothers receivein child-rearing.
Although Japanese mothers-in-law have traditionally been involved in the livesof their daughters-in-law, providing advice and support, their relationships with
their daughters-in-law have often been strained. Holloway (2010), for instance,
argues that “…virtually all the women whose mothers-in-law were still alive
characterized the relationship as difficult. They perceived their in-laws as nosy
and critical, rather than supportive. They did not feel that their in-lawsappreciated or respected them, nor did they value their in-laws’ perspectives onchild-rearing” (pp. 141–142). This suggests that mothers with small children

4

In the 1990s, the Japanese government implemented various policies to counteract the fallingbirthrate: the childcare market was deregulated, childcare centers were expanded by the Angel
Plan, and additional childbirth grants were provided. Because of these policies, having a childdid not discourage females from working (Lee and Lee 2014).
4

prefer their mothers to their mothers-in-law for support in child-rearing.
3. Hypotheses to be tested
Having grandchildren has both positive and negative effects. On the positiveside, the presence of grandchildren can be rewarding and a source of higher
satisfaction, and lead to more physical exercise and mental activity if care is
involved, which improves grandparents’ well-being (see Coall and Hertwig
2011; Powdthavee 2011; Silverstein et al. 2003).
On the negative side, caring for grandchildren also means additional
responsibility and stress, which may harm grandparents’ health and lead todepression, a reduction in leisure time, and alternative uses of time (see Minkler
1999). The balance between positive and negative effects is not clear a priori.
Some researchers have found that the informal care of grandchildren has anegative effect on grandparents’ mental health (Brunello and Rocco 2019, for
Italy), while others have found that such care increases well-being (see Dunifon
et al. 2020, for the United States; Powdthavee 2011, for the United Kingdom;
Wang et al. 2019, for China).55These differences could be because in countries such as Italy, the remarkably high rate of

cohabitation of adults with their parents leads to more intensive involvement of grandparents in
informal childcare, which causes the disadvantages of this care to be greater than the benefits(see Manacorda and Moretti 2006).

5

The benefits and disadvantages of having grandchildren are likely to vary bygender. In many societies, including Japan, grandmothers are more likely to be
involved in informal care than grandfathers. In addition, grandfathers tend topass the difficult and stressful components of childcare to grandmothers. Thissuggests that the disadvantages of having grandchildren may be greater for
grandmothers than for grandfathers. However, because the benefits could
sometimes also be greater, the overall effect cannot be determined a priori.
Brunello and Rocco (2019), for instance, find that the negative effects ofchildcare on the mental health of grandparents are larger for grandfathers thanfor grandmothers.
In this paper, we suggest that the effect of grandchildren on the happiness of
grandparents may vary not only with the gender of the grandparents but alsowith whether it is one’s daughter or daughter-in-law who has a child, mainly
because the relationship between a daughter (a son) and a mother is different
from that between a daughter (a son) and a mother-in-law.
Our observations from Japanese society suggest that, on average, a)
grandfathers are less likely to be involved in informal childcare than
grandmothers; b) when it is their daughter who has the child, maternal
grandmothers are more involved in informal childcare than paternal ones; andc) when it is their daughter-in-law who has the child, paternal grandmothers areless involved in informal childcare than maternal ones. Since higher
involvement increases the disadvantages of childcare, points b) and c) imply
that grandmothers are less likely to benefit from grandchildren when their
6

daughter has a child than when their daughter-in-law does.
Fig. 1 illustrates this network of weak (dashed lines) and strong (solid lines)
relationships within the typical Japanese family. It suggests the following
testable hypotheses:
H1) Grandmothers whose daughter has children benefit less (or lose more) interms of happiness from having grandchildren than grandmothers whosedaughter-in-law has children.
H2) For grandfathers, the net benefit from having grandchildren does not varywith whether it is their daughter or daughter-in-law who has the child.
4. Data
Our data are from an internet survey conducted in July 2016, 2017, and 2018 by
the Nikkei Research Company, which has substantial experience in conducting
academic surveys, on a representative sample of Japanese individuals aged 18
to 68.6
The data include information on individual self-reported happiness as well ason the number of children and grandchildren, and on individual characteristics,
such as household income, individual education, and, importantly, the age of theyoungest child. We focus on the 1,021 individuals aged 55 to 68 who had a

6

A 2015 government survey on the use of information technology indicates that over 90 percent
of working-age Japanese are internet users. Therefore, the bias due to the exclusion of non-users
is likely to be small. See the report from the Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs andCommunications
http://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/statistics/statistics05.html (accessed on April 5,2018).

7

single child.7 Of these, 19.5 percent had at least one grandchild.
Although we do not know the age of grandchildren, we know that, in 2017, theaverage age of their mothers at the first birth was 31 years (Ministry of Health,Labour, and Welfare 2017). Since, in our data, the 95 percentile of children’s
age is 39, we estimate that most grandchildren in our sample are aged less than
10.
Happiness is an ordinal variable that we obtain from the answers to thefollowing question:“Currently, to what degree are you feeling happy? On a scale from 1 to 5, where
5 is ‘very happy’ and 1 is ‘very unhappy,’ how would you rate your current levelof happiness?”
The distribution of answers to this question was as follows: 4.9 percent of the
respondents chose “1,” 9.8 percent “2,” 23 percent “3,” 38.2 percent “4,” and24.1 percent “5.” Table 1 shows that the average happiness is 3.67, average age
is 60.48, and average child’s age is 28.92. The share of female children isslightly below 0.5 at 0.49; the share of married individuals is 64.2 percent, and55.3 percent of the respondents have a college degree. The average householdincome is 6.09 million yen, the share of individuals with a high householdincome (above 10 million yen) is 16.3 percent, and 19.5 percent of the
respondents have at least one grandchild.

7

We exclude the very few observations where the age gap between the grandparent andqwettheir own child is less than 18.

8

5. Empirical model specification
We evaluate hypotheses H1 and H2 using only grandparents with a single child,
exploiting the fact that the gender of firstborns is approximately random. In
principle, access to ultrasound technologies and abortion services can alter thisfact by allowing parents to choose the sex of their children. In practice, however,
the availability of these techniques was limited for the cohorts of grandparents
considered in this study, who were aged 55 or older between 2016 and 2018 (seeCronqvist and Yu 2017).8
We estimate the following empirical model:
𝐻

𝛼

𝛼 𝐺𝐶

𝛼 𝐹

𝛼 𝐷

𝛼 𝐺𝐶 𝑥𝐹 𝑥𝐷

𝛽𝑋𝑢𝛼 𝐺𝐶 𝑥𝐹

𝛼 𝐺𝐶 𝑥𝐷(1)

where i denotes the i-th individual; H is individual happiness, an ordinal variableranging from 1 to 5; GC is a dummy equal to 1 for the presence of grandchildren
and 0, otherwise; and F is grandparents’ gender (F=1 for grandmothers and F=0
for grandfathers). D is the child’s gender (D=1 for daughters and D=0 for sons),
and X is a vector of controls, which includes the individual’s age, the child’sage, educational attainment, household income, marital status, and job type.
Since the presence of grandchildren is not random, but the outcome of a choice,
GC is correlated with the random error term u. In the absence of sources of8

According to Baba (2012) and Natori (2012), the technology using three-dimensional
ultrasonic images to observe the fetus was available as early as 1986. Its use, however, became
widespread only in the 1990s.

9exogenous variation, a consistent estimate of the effect of having a grandchildon individual happiness is not possible nor can we consistently estimate thegender difference in the effect of having a grandchild. In this study, we do not
try to estimate these effects. Rather, more modestly, we exploit the randomnessof the firstborn’s gender to consistently estimate the difference in the effect of
having a grandchild when the grandparent’s child is female vs when he is male.
For a grandmother with a daughter, the expected happiness associated withhaving grandchildren is
𝐸 𝐻 |𝐹

1, 𝐷

For

grandmother

with

1, 𝐷

1

a

𝐸 𝐻 |𝐹

1, 𝐺𝐶

∑

1

0, 𝐺𝐶

𝐸 𝑢 |𝐹

𝛼

a

∑

1, 𝐷

son,

the

𝛼

𝐸 𝑢 |𝐹

𝛼1, 𝐺𝐶

expected

1(2)

happiness

1, 𝐷

0, 𝐺𝐶

is

1 (3)

The difference between (2) and (3) is
𝐸 𝐻 |𝐹

1, 𝐷

1, 𝐺𝐶

1

𝐸 𝐻 |𝐹

1, 𝐷

0, 𝐺𝐶

1

𝛼

𝛼

𝛼
(4)

because𝐸 𝑢 |𝐹

1, 𝐷

1, 𝐺𝐶

1

𝐸 𝑢 |𝐹

1, 𝐷

0, 𝐺𝐶

1

0

when the child’s gender is random.
Since the happiness of maternal and paternal grandmothers could differ even in
the absence of grandchildren, we need to subtract from (4)𝐸 𝐻 |𝐹

1, 𝐷

1, 𝐺𝐶

0

𝐸 𝐻 |𝐹

which yields
10

1, 𝐷

0, 𝐺𝐶

0

𝛼

(5)

H1: 𝛼𝛼0Using the same procedure, we find that hypothesis H2 for maternal and paternal
grandfathers is given by
H2: 𝛼 =0
6. Results
First, we investigate whether a single child’s gender can be considered as goodas random by performing balancing tests, that is, by regressing the available
covariates on the dummy D, controlling for year effects and for missing values
dummies.9 Although our set of covariates is limited—it includes age, child’sage, dummies for high education and income, marital status, and employment
status—, we find no evidence (see Table 2) that they are correlated with D,
which supports our assumption.
We pre-processed our data to adjust the covariate distribution in the control
group (GC=0) so that it became more similar to the covariate distribution in thetreatment group (GC=1). For this purpose, we used entropy balancing(Hainmueller 2012).10 Table 3 shows the means and variances of the available
covariates for the treatment and control groups, before and after weighting.
In the raw data, both grandparents and parents in the treatment group were older
than those in the control group. Treated grandparents are also less educated and

9There are missing values for the following variables: household income, marital status,
employment status, and educational attainment.
10

Entropy balancing is a generalization of the propensity score weighting approach.

11

less likely to have a household income exceeding 10 million yen. These
differences were eliminated in the weighted sample, which we used to estimate
Eq. (1) by adopting either a linear or probit specification.
The results for the linear specification are reported in Table 4. We find that thevalue of the coefficient of the child’s gender dummy is small (-0.01) and notstatistically significant, suggesting that, in the absence of grandchildren, thegender of their child has no effect on the happiness of grandparents. In thepresence of grandchildren, however, whether the grandparents’ child is female
or male matters for the grandmother, but not for the grandfather, as hypothesized
above.
In particular, we find that H1: 𝛼𝛼 = -0.49, negative and statisticallydifferent from zero at the 5 percent level of confidence (standard error: 0.23),
and that H2: 𝛼 = 0.18, not significantly different from zero (standard error:0.26). When measured in terms of average happiness, the gap in the change inhappiness for grandmothers with grandchildren from a daughter rather than ason is -13.3 percent (-0.49/3.67), a considerable amount. For grandfathers, thisgap is much smaller (4.9 percent).
Recently, Schröder and Yitzhaki (2017) and Bond and Lang (2019) have shown
that, when happiness is measured as an ordinal variable, the average ranking ofobserved happiness across groups can be arbitrarily reversed unless someunreasonably strong conditions are assumed. Chen et al. (2019) proposedaddressing this problem using median rather than mean regressions. For probit

12and logit models, the median and the mean are identical. Therefore, we create abinary variable that is equal to 1 when H=5 and 0, otherwise, and estimate aprobit specification of Eq. (1).11 The results in Table 5 confirm our qualitative
results. We also find that H1: 𝛼𝛼 = -0.21, negative and statisticallysignificant at the one percent level of confidence (standard error: 0.09), and that
H2: 𝛼 = 0.02, not significantly different from zero (standard error: 0.13), in linewith the previous results.
Conclusions
Japan is a developed East-Asian country with a cultural and social backgroundthat differs from that of Western societies. Using independently collectedindividual-level data, this paper shows that maternal grandmothers have more
to lose or less to gain from having grandchildren than paternal grandmothers. In
contrast, grandfathers’ changes in happiness do not depend on their own child’s
gender. We have explained this result through the fact that maternal
grandmothers have stronger ties with their daughters than with their sons, and,
therefore, bear a higher burden of informal childcare, with negative effects.
Some may argue that the difficult relationship between women and theirmothers-in-law is not found only in Japan (see, for instance, Chan and Elder
2000, for the US). Whether our results hold for other countries outside Japan is
an interesting question that should be addressed in future research.

11

This new variable has a mean of 0.241.

13

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the insightful commentsthat resulted in a thorough revision, and Editage (www.editage.jp) for English
language editing. This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific
Research B (Grant No. 16H03628) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science.

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G rand-F ather

G rand-M otherG rand-F ather

F ather

G rand-M otherM other

G rand-child
Figure 1. Strength of ties within the typical Japanese family.
Notes: dashed lines are for weaker ties and solid lines for stronger ties

20

Table 1. Summary statistics
Mean

Standard
deviation

Happiness level (1: lowest; 5: highest)

3.67

1.09

Have grandchildren (1: grandchildren; 0: otherwise)

0.19

0.39

Age

60.48

3.42

Child’s age

28.92

6.37

Child’s gender (0: male; 1: female)

0.49

0.50

Married (1: married; 0: otherwise)

0.64

0.48

Not employed (1: not employed; 0: otherwise)

0.23

0.42

Highly educated (1: college or more; 0: less than college)

0.55

0.49

High income (1: household income exceeds 10 million
yen; 0: otherwise)

0.16

0.37

Average household income (million yen)

6.09

5.41

21

Table 2. Balancing tests
Age

Parent’s

High

High

age

education

incomeMarriedNot
employedChild is female-0.130(0.21)-0.40(0.40)

0.02(0.03)-0.01(0.02)-0.01(0.01)-0.02(0.02)

Number ofobservations

1,021

1,021

1,021

1,021

1,021

1,021

Time dummies
Missing values
dummies

Y
Y

Y
Y

Y
Y

Y
Y

Y
Y

Y
Y

Note: Robust standard errors are in parentheses. One, two, and three asterisks indicate statisticalsignificance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively. “Child is female” is set to 1 if the respondent’s
only child is a daughter, and 0, otherwise.

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Table 3. Covariates before and after entropy balancing
a. Before balancing
Mean GC=1

Variance
GC=1

Mean
GC=0

Variance
GC=0

Age

62.41

8.33

60.01

11.36

Child’s age

34.62

21.68

27.54

34.51

Married

0.56

0.25

0.66

0.22

Not employed

0.25

0.19

0.23

0.18

Highly educated

0.44

0.25

0.58

0.24

High income

5.34

35.27

6.27

27.76

Mean GC=1

Variance
GC=1

Mean GC=0

Variance
GC=0

Age

62.41

8.33

62.40

8.33

Child’s age

34.62

21.68

34.62

21.71

Married

0.57

0.25

0.57

0.25

Not employed

0.25

0.19

0.25

0.19

Highly educated

0.44

0.25

0.44

0.25

High income

0.28

0.20

0.45

0.25

b. After balancing

Note: “GC” is equal to 1 if the respondent has grandchildren, and 0, otherwise.

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Table 4. Weighted Ordinary least squares estimates using the weights generated byentropy balancing
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼

Treatment (GC=1)
FemaleChild is female
Female x treatment
Female child x treatment
Female child x treatment x female
𝐻1: 𝛼
𝛼
𝐻2: 𝛼

Number of observations
R squared

CoefficientStandard error-0.38*-0.04-0.01
0.56**
0.18-0.67**-0.49**

0.19
0.12
0.12
0.25
0.26
0.30
0.23

0.18

0.26

1021
0.027

Note: Robust standard errors are in parentheses. One, two, and three asterisks indicate statisticalsignificance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively. “Treatment” is 1 if the respondent has
grandchildren, and 0, otherwise. “Female” is 1 if the respondent is female, and 0, otherwise. “Child isfemale” is 1 if the respondent’s child is a daughter, and 0, otherwise.

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Table 5. Probit estimates using the weights generated by entropy balancing. Dependent
variable: Probability that H=5. Marginal effects.

𝛼
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼
𝛼

Treatment (GC=1)
FemaleChild is female
Female x treatment
Female child x treatment
Female child x treatment x female
𝐻1: 𝛼
𝛼
𝐻2: 𝛼

CoefficientStandard
error-0.16*-0.02
0.02
0.33***
0.02-0.23*-0.21**
0.02

0.09
0.06
0.06
0.10
0.13
0.13
0.07
0.11

Number of observations

1,021

Pseudo R squared

0.037

Note: Robust standard errors are in parentheses. One, two, and three asterisks indicate statisticalsignificance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively. “Treatment” is 1 if the respondent has
grandchildren, and 0, otherwise. “Female” is 1 if the respondent is female, and 0, otherwise. “Child isfemale” is 1 if the respondent’s child is a daughter, and 0, otherwise.

25