Grandparents “on board”: How they translate into the households’ fertility decisions

Abstract

We test whether the co-residence of older parents with their adult children of reproductive age increases the chance of them forming a multichild family. Using data from Wave X of the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) and multinomial logistic regression, we model the number of children using the binary variable informing if there is an older household member (or not) as the main predictor and controlling for other socio-economic household attributes. Our data set covers 11 European countries. The results do not support the view that intergenerational households in which an elderly person lives include more children. Thus, we do not find evidence that the co-residence of two adult generations of pensioner parents and their working-age children translates into the households’ fertility decisions and stimulates growth in the number of multichild families. What can affect it is the gender equality policy facilitating solving the motherhood–work conflict for families and women.