Grandparents, and in particular grandmothers, are an important source of informal child care for their grandchildren in most developed countries. The literature shows how these informal transfers of care can help promote female labor participation. However, less is known about how working-age grandmothers are combining care with their own labor participation. In this paper, I use data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe and analyze to what extent child care is provided by grandmothers in ten European countries and how grandmothers are combining this task with paid work. I also revisit the question of whether the child care provided by grandmothers is encouraging the labor participation of their offspring. The empirical approach takes into account the simultaneity of labor market decisions and caregiving activities while controlling for grandmother’s unobserved heterogeneity on their willingness to provide care to their grandchildren. I find a negative and significant effect of participating in the labor market on the probability of taking care of the grandchildren on a regular basis. I also find evidence that, for some countries, the child care provided by working-age grandmothers has a positive effect on the labor participation of their daughters.

中文翻译：

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家庭劳动参与和育儿决策：阿妈的作用

在大多数发达国家，祖父母（尤其是祖母）是为其子孙提供非正式托儿服务的重要来源。文献表明，这些非正式的护理转移如何有助于促进女性劳动参与。但是，对于工作年龄的祖母如何将护理与自己的劳动参与相结合的了解还很少。在本文中，我使用了来自欧洲的健康，老龄化和退休调查的数据，并分析了欧洲十个国家的祖母在何种程度上提供托儿服务以及祖母如何将这项任务与有偿工作结合在一起。我还回顾一下祖母提供的托儿服务是否正在鼓励其后代参与劳动的问题。该经验方法考虑了劳动力市场决策和照顾活动的同时性，同时控制了祖母在为孙子提供照顾方面的意愿的未观察到的异质性。我发现参加劳动力市场对定期照顾孙子孙女的可能性有负面​​影响。我还发现有证据表明，在某些国家，适龄祖母提供的育儿对女儿的劳动参与有积极影响。