The economic role of elderly people is underestimated in the context of the debate on pension reforms. This is because, as healthy life expectancy increases, the elderly become more active not only in the labor market but also in household production. Using a three-period overlapping-generations model in which grandparents allocate time between labor and informal childcare (“grandparenting”), we analyze the interaction among grandparenting, fertility, elderly labor, and public pensions. We obtain two analytical results. First, increasing the pension contribution rate increases grandparenting. Second, elderly labor force participation rates are negatively (positively) related to the fertility rates among countries with small (large) public pensions. The nonlinear relationship between elderly labor and fertility is empirically supported.

在关于养老金改革的辩论中，老年人的经济作用被低估了。这是因为，随着健康预期寿命的增加，老年人不仅在劳动力市场而且在家庭生产中变得更加活跃。使用三期重叠世代模型，其中祖父母在劳动和非正式育儿之间分配时间（“祖父母”），我们分析了祖父母，生育力，老年劳工和公共养老金之间的相互作用。我们得到两个分析结果。首先，提高养老金缴费率将增加祖父母。第二，老年人养老金参与率与公共养老金少（大）的国家的生育率负相关（正）。经验支持了老年劳动与生育率之间的非线性关系。