Research by UCLA Economics Professor Dora Costa was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal in an article examining how delayed childbearing is reshaping the experience of grandparenthood in the United States.

The article draws on Costa’s new NBER working paper, “Compound Delay: The Causes and Consequences of Later Grandmotherhood,” coauthored with Matthew E. Kahn. The study examines how delays in fertility can accumulate across generations, substantially increasing the age at which women first become grandmothers.

Costa and Kahn estimate that, under the first-birth patterns observed in 1960, the median age at first grandmotherhood would have been 44. Under 2024 fertility patterns, it rises to 57. As a result, the number of healthy years that grandmothers can expect to share with their grandchildren falls from approximately 28 to 15, despite improvements in longevity.

The research highlights important implications for intergenerational relationships and family support. Older grandparents may have fewer healthy years in which to provide childcare and other forms of assistance, while at the same time often having greater financial resources available to support their children and grandchildren. The study also finds that the shift toward later grandmotherhood has been particularly pronounced among college-educated women.

The Wall Street Journal article, “Older Grandparents Have More Aches and Pains—and More Money for Grandkids,” discusses Costa and Kahn’s findings in the context of the changing role of grandparents in American families.

The Wall Street Journal article can be found here. The paper NBER working paper can be found here .