Center-based childcare expansion and grandparents' employment and well-being

Grandparents, especially grandmothers, are highly involved in childcare globally. There is a rising interest in studying the relationship between providing care and grandmothers' economic well-being in social science and health literature. However, little is known about how grandmothers' behavior responds to a government's family policy. This paper examines the effects of a large government-led formal childcare expansion on the well-being of working-age grandparents living with their adult children in China. We exploit the variation in program intensity across provinces and years and find that a higher coverage rate of center-based childcare increases the employment of grandmothers. By contrast, grandfathers' employment is not responsive. Further investigation reveals that the effect is stronger among the women who were richer, more educated, lived in urban areas, and paternal grandmothers. We find that the childcare expansion decreases grandmothers' chance of having chronic disease and depression.