Abstract
AbstractGenerational overlap affects the care time demands on parents and grandparents worldwide. Here, we present the first global estimates of the experience of simultaneously having frail older parents and young children (“sandwichness”) or young grandchildren (“grandsandwichness”) for the 1970–2040 cohorts, using demographic methods and microsimulations. We find that sandwichness is more prevalent in the Global South—for example, almost twice as prevalent in sub‐Saharan Africa as it is in Europe for the 1970 cohort—but is expected to decline globally by one‐third between 1970 and 2040. The Global North might have reached a peak in the simultaneous care time demands from multiple generations but the duration of the grandsandwich state will increase by up to one year in Africa and Asia. This increasing generational overlap implies more care time demands over the entire adult life course, but also opens up an opportunity for the full potential of grandparenthood to materialize.
Highlights
Parents throughout the world face challenges in meeting care demands, but a continued focus on Europe and North America has shaped the way we think about the consequences and causes of intergenerational transfers
Our results pertain to the “Sandwich Generation,” who are squeezed between frail old parents or parents-in-law within five years of death and young children under age 15; and to the “Grandsandwich Generation,” who are squeezed between aging parents or parents-in-law within five years of death and grandchildren under age 15
We looked at how historical and projected demographic trends shape the experience of being sandwiched between frail older parents or parents-in-law on the one hand, and young children (i.e., “sandwichness”) or young grandchildren (i.e., “grandsandwichness”) on the other
Summary
Parents throughout the world face challenges in meeting care demands, but a continued focus on Europe and North America has shaped the way we think about the consequences and causes of intergenerational transfers. While some life stages are “busier” than others, there is little agreement about the best way to measure this “rush-hour of life” (Zannella et al 2019) Existing measures such as dependency ratios summarize the relationship between dependency and production in a population, but hide the timing of events over the life course. There is no standard definition of sandwichness, but in the sociological literature the term generally refers to women carrying the “double burden” of informal care and professional work responsibilities This definition is closely related to the original description of the “women in the middle” phenomenon, which focused on the interaction between labor market participation and care responsibilities among middle-aged women in the United States (Schwartz 1977; Brody 1981). Working women who strive to keep their jobs while providing informal care (Schmitz and Stroka 2013) tend to report more time-based family interference with work
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