Grandparenting and Caregiving Grandmother’s Depressive Symptoms in South Korea

Seung-won Choi , Michigan State University

Although a growing number of older Korean women provide an intensive level of childcare for their grandchildren, little is known about the long-term health implication of grandparenting for mental health in later life. Drawing from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (N = 3,263), I examine how grandparenting influences the trajectory of depressive symptoms between 2008 and 2012. Results from latent growth curve models indicate that grandmothers who offer multigenerational household grandparenting and full-time noncoresident grandparenting have a lower level of depressive symptoms than that of noncaregiving counterparts.

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 Presented in Session 6. Health & Mortality & Aging