Presence of Grandparents and Labour Market Outcomes of Mothers: Evidence from India

Mousumi Dutta, Presidency University
Zakir Husain, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

This paper examines whether the presence of grand-parents is likely to increase probability of mothers’ working. The first part of the analysis is undertaken using the third wave of the Demographic Health Survey data (2005-06). Analysis reveals that presence of co-residential elderly relatives actually reduced the probability of working of women with children aged below 12 years in rural areas, towns and capital cities—only in metropolitan cities do we observe the expected positive relation between the two variables. DHS data, however, fails to take into account factors like health status and proximity of non-co-residential grand-parents. To overcome this deficiency, we undertook a primary survey covering 750 households in Kolkata, one of the six metropolitan cities covered under the DHS survey, to check robustness of earlier result. Results indicate that if grand-parents are healthy and reside close-by, this encourages mother’s to work. The type of grand-parental care provided is also examined.