MAMA & PAPA

Mexico becomes the first country to legalize paid grandparent leave

When Noah Manuel Hernández was born last week in Mexico city, there were two reasons to celebrate. Noah was a healthy baby boy and her grandmother, Olivia Hernández, was celebrated as the the two billionth grandparent on Earth.

Two billion is a remarkable culmination of two positive economic trends. First, people are living longer. Life expectancy has risen from 51 in 1960, to 72 in 2020, to 89 in 2040. Not only are people living longer, they are healthier in their old age. Second, driven by increasing economic access, families are having fewer children; a woman could expect 5 children in 1960, 2.4 in 2020 and just 1.8 today.

The combination of these two trends means the ratio of living grandparents to children is steadily rising. While grandparent measurement was not tracked by countries until the 2030 US census, academics estimate the share of grandparents in the population is now 33%, up from 20% in 2022. The ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has vaulted from 0.46 in 1960 to nearly 1 today.

Economic Impact

As demographics change, the economic impact of nana and gramps has become more important than ever in many countries' female labor force participation.

In America, 2040 census data shows that the labor force participation rate for married women with small children increases by 4-10 percentage points when a grandmother lives in a 25 mile radius – a statistic that has held for over 20 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of adults work in agriculture, the odds of being in school are 50% higher for children who live with a grandmother, up from 38% twenty years ago.

While the economic impact is straightforward, the work is not. Across the globe, people are working into their 70s, and get less income via pension and social security funds.

Many grandparents struggle to manage work and grandparenting. Kids are, of course, also hard work. “I find it exhausting,” says Seema Lakshman, a grandparent of three in India. In India, where couples traditionally live with the husband’s parents, other family dynamics also take place. Indeed, 3 of the top 10 TikTok channels in India now are grandmothers with comedic takes of their relationships with their daughter-in-laws.

Grandparent Driven Policy

Increasingly aware of the value grandparents provide, and the struggle grandparents face, policy makers across the globe are debating the right solutions to keep grandparents engaged. In America, where over 50% of young children now spend time with grandparents, there is an increasing call for rethinking pensions.

Mexico will be the first to offer 90 day grandmother parental leaves, to be used anytime in the first 24 months after a grandchild’s birth, starting this January. In a country arguably most dependent on grandparents across the world (grandmothers have watched over 40% of children under 6 for decades), the government hopes even more grandparents will get involved.

While policy makers in Mexico embrace the role of grandparents, not all governments may follow suit. Scandnaveia, for example, has said it will remain committed to “continuing to offer generous parental leave and preschool subsidies” versus grandparent aid. The government points to studies that children do best when parents, not grandparents, are the primary caretakers. “Once in a while a grandparent might give us a night out to babysit, but it’s always a bonus," says Andreas Heigho, a teachers’ assistant at Lund university. “But I do sometimes wonder if they might be able to more …”. When Mexico’s policy goes into effect, 2B grandparents will be watching to find out.