Grandparent, Parent and Child Coresidence: Links with Child Health

Natasha Pilkauskas, Cornell University

As many as 25% of children spend some time during early childhood in a three-generation household, where a child lives with a grandparent and a parent, and these households have increased over the last decade. Despite the frequency of this living arrangement, surprisingly little research has studied whether three-generation coresidence is linked with child health. This study uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort, to investigate whether three-generation coresidence in early childhood is linked with child obesity, psychomotor skills and overall health at kindergarten entry. The findings suggest that three-generation coresidence in early childhood is linked with higher odds of obesity, lower odds of excellent health and fewer gross motor skills and that there are differences by race/ethnicity. Future analyses will study whether maternal nativity moderates the associations and examine the role of health insurance and income in explaining these associations.