(February 2025) Social advantages and disadvantages are often passed down through generations, with financial resources and opportunities transferring from parents to children.

Most research has looked at how parents support their children in early life, and how this affects children’s outcomes. But for many, parental investment does not stop when a child becomes an adult – an area that has been studied far less closely.

In a recent study published in Social Forces, researchers Ariane Bertogg and Diana Galos explore to what extent grandparents’ investment in adult children, in terms of providing money and grandchild care, is influenced by parental income and the welfare system of the country they live in.

Drawing on six waves of data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, collected between 2004 and 2017, the researchers analysed responses from over 53,000 grandparents aged 50+ across 18 European countries. They also compared income inequality across countries using Eurostat data to understand the broader economic context.

They looked at two crucial elements of the welfare system:

1.    Each country’s government spending on formal childcare per preschool-aged child.
2.    How evenly each country distributed income after taxes and government support.

Money vs. Time: Do Less Affluent Parents Compensate with More Childcare?

One question the researchers explored was whether grandparents who are financially constrained compensate by offering more hands-on childcare. The answer? Not really. There was little evidence to suggest that less affluent parents make up for financial limitations by providing additional childcare.

To sum up - adult children of more affluent grandparents receive more financial support and more help with grandchild care. This “social gradient” in intergenerational support may have further consequences for young families’ wellbeing and grandchildren’s development.

The Double Disadvantage: How Country Differences in Welfare Systems Affect Support

The study further revealed that in countries where the government does not invest heavily in formal childcare or income redistribution —where government spending on childcare and income redistribution is limited—the financial situation of parents plays a far more significant role in the support they provide to their adult children. More affluent grandparents were more likely to offer both financial assistance and childcare to their adult children, with this gap being particularly stark in nations with higher income inequality.

In contrast, in countries with robust welfare systems, such as Sweden, Denmark, and Luxembourg, both rich and poor families received similar levels of financial and childcare support from their parents. These findings suggest that strong welfare policies help level the playing field by reducing the disparity in intergenerational transfers between wealthier and poorer families.

But in countries with greater income inequality, like Greece and Portugal, wealthier grandparents were far more likely to provide financial support.

A similar pattern occurs for government spending on childcare. In countries that invest heavily in childcare - like Denmark, Sweden, and Luxembourg - wealthier and poorer grandparents were equally likely to offer financial help. But in countries with little childcare funding, such as Greece, Poland, and the Czech Republic, wealthier grandparents were much more likely to provide financial help than their poorer counterparts.

Welfare Systems Make a Difference

In a nutshell, if you raise a child in a country with minimal government investment in childcare or income redistribution, the financial situation of your parents becomes far more important in determining the level of support you’ll receive as an adult.

Study by Ariane Bertogg, Diana Roxana Galos, Double (Dis)Advantage: The Cumulative Role of Parental Resources and the Institutional Context in Intergenerational Time and Money Transfers, Social Forces, Volume 102, Issue 4, June 2024, Pages 1269–1287, DOI: 10.1093/sf/soae019.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soae019

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