Grandparents in multigenerational households: the case of Portugal

Population ageing has paved the way for important and lasting multigenerational bonds, particularly between grandparents and
grandchildren. Proximity is a powerful enhancer of relations, and co-residence, by involving continual proximity and long-term
commitment, is particularly facilitative of significant linkages between generations. Although co-residence has generally
been decreasing in Western societies, in the last decades of the millennium, a trend reversal was identified in the proportion
of multigenerational households in the USA. Using data drawn from the European Community Household Panel, 1994–2001, some
descriptive insights are provided that were considered to be missing in regard to the socio-demographic composition of extended
households with grandparents in Portugal. Additionally, this study finds a rising trend in the proportion of multigenerational
households, specifically those that include both grandparents and grandchildren. Portugal is possibly the European country
that has the highest probability of exhibiting this pattern of evolution, because of the combination of its being a welfare
state with limited resources, its historical reliance on family solidarity and its high level of participation of women in
the labor market. Co-residence is a type of intergenerational transfer that can benefit any of the generations involved, but
the direction of its net flow is still open to debate. A breakdown is made of its trend into age, period and cohort effects,
in order to contribute to the discussion of the relative importance of the different generations in the shared living arrangement.
Our findings suggest a mixture of interests, as well as a predominant influence of contemporary circumstances in the observed
trend. These contemporary circumstances may be persistent or transient, but co-residence with grandparents is certainly an
enduring mechanism, which households use in order to meet their needs.