TY - JOUR
T1 - Grandparents caring for grandchildren in China and Korea
T2 - findings from CHARLS and KLoSA
AU - Ko, Pei Chun
AU - Hank, Karsten
N1 - Funding Information:
acknowledgments Pei-Chun Ko is supported by a stipend from the German research Foundation (DFG). We are grateful to the China Center for Economic research at Beijing University for providing us with the CHarls pilot data and to Hyejung lee from the Korea labor Institute for providing us with the Klosa data. We also thank the editor of Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences, three anonymous reviewers, and participants of a sOClIFE seminar at the University of Cologne for their helpful comments. Pei-Chun Ko contributed to planning and writing the paper; she performed all statistical analyses. Karsten Hank contributed to planning and writing the paper; he supervised the data analysis.
PY - 2014/7
Y1 - 2014/7
N2 - Objectives. To provide an overview of the prevalence and profiles of grandparents providing childcare to grandchildren in 2 East Asian countries, China and South Korea, characterized by similar demographic developments and a shared cultural background but having very different contemporary institutional and socioeconomic circumstances. Method. We apply logistic models to analyze pilot data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA; Wave 2). Our analytic sample comprises 772 Chinese respondents and 4,958 Korean respondents aged 45-79. Results. The proportions of grandparents providing childcare to grandchildren differ considerably between China (58%) and South Korea (6%). Still, the determinants of grandparents' involvement in childcare (e.g., age, geographic proximity) are fairly similar in both countries. However, financial support from adult children to grandparents is found to be significant in China only, whereas Korean grandparents exhibit a greater propensity to care for their (employed) daughters' children than for their sons' children. Discussion. Our analysis suggests that in South Korea, patrilineal considerations may begin to lose some of their importance in shaping downward functional solidarity between generations and that instead (grand-)children's actual needs, particularly those related to maternal employment, receive more attention. We find no such evidence in our Chinese sample.
AB - Objectives. To provide an overview of the prevalence and profiles of grandparents providing childcare to grandchildren in 2 East Asian countries, China and South Korea, characterized by similar demographic developments and a shared cultural background but having very different contemporary institutional and socioeconomic circumstances. Method. We apply logistic models to analyze pilot data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA; Wave 2). Our analytic sample comprises 772 Chinese respondents and 4,958 Korean respondents aged 45-79. Results. The proportions of grandparents providing childcare to grandchildren differ considerably between China (58%) and South Korea (6%). Still, the determinants of grandparents' involvement in childcare (e.g., age, geographic proximity) are fairly similar in both countries. However, financial support from adult children to grandparents is found to be significant in China only, whereas Korean grandparents exhibit a greater propensity to care for their (employed) daughters' children than for their sons' children. Discussion. Our analysis suggests that in South Korea, patrilineal considerations may begin to lose some of their importance in shaping downward functional solidarity between generations and that instead (grand-)children's actual needs, particularly those related to maternal employment, receive more attention. We find no such evidence in our Chinese sample.
KW - Childcare
KW - East Asia
KW - Grandparenting
KW - Intergenerational support
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84902131599&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/geronb/gbt129
DO - 10.1093/geronb/gbt129
M3 - Article
C2 - 24378959
AN - SCOPUS:84902131599
SN - 1079-5014
VL - 69
SP - 646
EP - 651
JO - Journals of Gerontology - Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
JF - Journals of Gerontology - Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
IS - 4
ER -