Grandparenthood Penalty in Agriculture: Grandchild Caregiving and Farm Performance
利用中国农村面板数据，研究祖父母照料孙辈对农场绩效的影响，发现照料孙辈虽未导致退出农业，但显著降低了农场收入、净收入和作物产量，并揭示了健康损害、农业投资限制和土地规模缩减等机制。
Grandparenting is common globally, but it entails substantial costs of transferring time, financial and emotional resources and is said to cause a variety of labour market consequences for caregivers. This paper examines the effect of grandparents’ grandchild caregiving on their farm performance in rural China where grandparenting has historically been prevalent. Using a constructed panel data on potential grandparents’ grandparenting status from the National Fixed Point Survey, we exploit the instrumental variable approach to estimate both the extensive and intensive margin effect of grandparenting on farm performance. Our results suggest that, although grandchild caregiving did not encourage caregivers to quit farming, it resulted in a substantial decrease in caregivers’ total farm income, net farm income and crop yields. We also find supportive evidence for the plausible mechanisms behind the identified farming losses: the grandparenting-induced health damaging effect particularly on grandmothers, the agricultural-investment restriction effect, and the farmland downsizing effect, both of which proves to be the important determinant of agricultural production. Overall, our study provides robust evidence in support of the existence of grandparenthood penalty in agriculture sectors, which is of special importance to global agricultural production.