Grandparents and Grandchildren Living Together

The U.S. Census Bureau released a report about the trends of grandparents providing a home for a grandchild who lost a parent or moving in with family to combine finances.

The report, which was published in February 2024, explores a wide array of characteristics of contemporary grandparents and grandchildren, mainly focusing on households in which grandparents and grandchildren live together.

The report includes:

• National trends in grandparents living with grandchildren.
• An overview of households with coresident grandparents and grandchildren.
• Patterns of whether grandparents are responsible for their grandchildren.
• Characteristics of grandparents living with grandchildren.
• Comparisons between coresidential and non-coresidential grandparents.
• Characteristics of grandchildren who reside with grandparents.

Highlights of this report are:

• In 2021, 3.3 percent of adults aged 30 and over lived with grandchildren. Over half of these adults were aged 30 to 64.
• Grandparents living with grandchildren were older in 2021 than in 2012. In 2012, 46.8 percent were aged 60 and over, which increased in 2021 to over 60 percent.
• Coresident grandparents living in their children's homes were more likely to have at least one disability than those living in their own homes.
• Grandparents were more likely to be responsible for their grandchildren for 5 years or longer in 2021 compared to 2012.
• A higher percentage of grandparents living with grandchildren were Black or African American, Asian, or Hispanic than those who did not live with grandchildren.
• Grandparents who did not live with grandchildren were more likely to have a spouse or partner living with them.
• For grandchildren who live with grandparents, it was more common to also live with both parents or their mother in the household than to live with their father or no parent in the household.
• About 16.2 percent of grandchildren under the age of 18 living with grandparents were in poverty, though the percentage was higher in grandparent-maintained households (18.6 percent) compared to parent-maintained households (14.2 percent).
• About 76.1 percent of all grandchildren under the age of 18 living with grandparents lived in households that received public assistance, most commonly through the school lunch program.

Read the full report at this link: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p20-588.pdf