Grandchild caregiving and social activity participation among urban grandparents in China: are migrants disadvantaged compared to locals?

Background and objectives: Grandchild caregiving is a common phenomenon among urban Chinese grandparents. Amid profound economic reforms and enormous demographic shifts in China, many rural grandparents have followed their adult children and migrated into urban areas to provide care for their grandchildren. However, little research has explored how grandparenting influences social participation among local and rural-to-urban migrant grandparents. This study examined the association between grandchild caregiving and Chinese grandparents’ participation in social activities in urban areas. We further explored whether this association differs between local and migrant grandparents and investigated how this migration-related heterogeneity varies by gender. Research Design and Methods: This study employed four waves of data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) spanning from 2011 to 2018. Three variables were constructed to measure whether to participate in any social activities, the number of types of social activities, and the frequency of social participation. Grandparenting was measured by a dummy variable indicating whether to provide care to grandchildren and a categorical variable to represent caregiving intensity. We employed the fixed effects model to examine the association between grandchild caregiving and social activity participation. Results: Our findings indicate that a significant positive effect of grandchild caregiving on social activity participation, primarily driven by moderate caregiving. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that these positive effects were observed only among local grandparents, with migration-based heterogeneity evident only among grandmothers. Discussion and Implications: Our findings offer valuable policy implications in the context of rapid population aging and large-scale internal migration in contemporary China and other developing countries.