COMPARING SCHOOLING RESULTS FOR CHILDREN LIVING WITH AND WITHOUT GRANDPARENTS IN BRAZIL

As multigenerational coresidence increases, implications for children remain unclear. We compare children’s educational outcomes across multigenerational household type to distinguish arrangements promoting functionalist support from those reflecting disadvantage. We analyze SAEB test scores from 1.17 million Brazilian ninth grade public school students, jointly disaggregating by parental and grandparental presence The results show that in two-parent households, presence of grandparents—especially two grandparents—is strongly associated with lower test scores, consistent with crowding, role strain, or underlying disadvantage. In no-parent households, all grandparental presence is beneficial. Grandmothers are more beneficial in father-only than mother-only homes, suggesting role complementarity versus redundancy. Grandfather presence is typically detrimental and tends to dilute the benefits of grandmothers, aligning with both functional strain and disadvantage frameworks. Findings demonstrate that disaggregation by parental and grandparental presence and gender can help disentangle support from disadvantage, clarifying the mechanisms linking multigenerational living to children’s outcomes.