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Public Information Office CB99-115
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Ken Bryson/Lynne Casper
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Nearly 5.5 Million Children Live with Grandparents,
Census Bureau Reports
About 5,435,000 children, or 7.7 percent of all children in the United
States, were living in homes with a grandparent in 1997, the Commerce
Department's Census Bureau said today.
The findings are part of the Census Bureau's first report on households
where grandparents and grandchildren live together.
"A grandparent maintains the household in three-fourths of families that
have both grandparents and grandchildren," said Ken Bryson, co-author with
Lynne M. Casper of Coresident Grandparents and Grandchildren, P23-198.
In the remaining one-fourth, parents maintain homes in which grandparents
and grandchildren live together.
Householders are defined as those in whose name the housing unit is
owned or rented.
Casper said that grandchildren in certain types of families are more
prone to economic hardship.
"For example, about two-thirds of grandchildren in homes maintained by a
grandmother with no spouse or parents of the grandchildren present are in
poverty," Casper said.
Grandparent-maintained households differ from parent-maintained
households in many other ways. The report contrasts grandparent- and
parent-maintained families where grandchildren live with grandparents:
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Grandparent-maintained families Parent-maintained families
with grandchildren with grandparents and grandchildren
Half of these families consist Only 13 percent of these families
of both a grandmother and grandfather; have both a grandmother and
most of the others (43 percent) have grandfather living there, while
a grandmother with no husband. 70 percent of such families have
only a grandmother present.
Only 15 percent of the grandmothers Half the grandmothers and
and 21 percent of the grandfathers 56 percent of the grandfathers
are 65 or older. are 65 or older.
A majority of both grandfathers Only a third of the grandfathers
(72 percent) and grandmothers and a quarter of the grandmothers
(56 percent) are employed. are employed.
Half the grandchildren in such Only a third of the grandchildren
families are under age 6. are under age 6.
About 27 percent of the grandchildren About 17 percent of the
are poor. grandchildren are poor.
A third of the grandchildren have Only 19 percent of the
no health insurance. grandchildren have no health
insurance.
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The report notes that Census 2000 will include a multi-part question
addressing the issue of grandparents as caregivers.
Data are from the March 1997 Current Population Survey. As in all
surveys, the estimates are subject to sampling variability and other
sources of error.
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The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely,
relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United
States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an
economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and
economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in
1790.
