By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007-08, the first year of the Great Recession, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

According to Pew Research Center, there has been a six percent increase in the number of children living with grandparent since 2007, which amounts to 2.9 million U.S. children who are now living with their grandparents. Four out of every ten of those children are being raised primarily by the grandparent.

“Almost half (49%) of children being raised by grandparents also live with a single parent,” the report found. “For about four-in-ten (43%) of these children, there is no parent in the household.”

The phenomenon of grandparents serving as primary caregivers is more common among blacks and Hispanics than among whites, but the sharpest rise since the recession began has been among whites, the report continues. From 2000 to 2008, there was a 19 percent increase in the number of white grandparents caring for their grandkids.

Overall, the number of grandparents who are caring for children has increased eight percent from 2.4 million in 2000 to 2.6 million in 2008.

These elderly caregivers tend to come from modest means, with nearly one-in-five living below the poverty line.

They also tend to be younger, with more than two-thirds (67%) being younger than age 60 and 13 percent being younger than age 45.

The report also found that among those Americans who have grandchildren, being a grandparent is central to the lives of most older Americans.

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