Shifting Age and Education of Grandparents in South Asia: Older yet Higher Educated

Saroja Adhikari, Max Planck Institute for demographic Research
Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Grandparents are integral to family support systems and provide essential physical, financial, and emotional care, as well as the transmission of cultural practices and wealth to grandchildren. In South Asia, grandparents also play active caregiving roles and commonly co-reside in the same household. While previous research has examined grandparenting roles and sociodemographic trends separately, there remains a significant gap in understanding the intersection of changing grandparents’ characteristics and grandparental roles due to the evolving sociodemographic trends of a country within the context of South Asia. This study investigates how these sociodemographic changes can affect the average age, sex, and education of grandparents in South Asia.Findings indicate that the number of grandparents is expected to increase in the future due to rising life expectancy in the region. Future grandparents will be both older and better educated than before, and differences in age and education distributions between grandfathers and grandmothers will narrow over time. Drawing from previous research and current findings, we provide an overview of how grandparental care may change in the future, influenced by grandparents’ age, sex, and education. Policymakers could benefit by creating policies that incorporate the shifting nature of grandparental care based on changing sociodemographic characteristics to balance formal and informal care demands.

Keywords: Older Adults and Intergenerational Relations, Human Capital, Education, and Work, Population Ageing, Population projections, forecasts, and estimations

See paper.