| With the insufficiency of child-care services,the universal two-child policy has not worked well.At the same time,the supply of pension and aged service is inadequate.Hence,the family will play an important role in the aged service and childcare,such as the grandparents take part in childcare and the young parents look after the elderly.This is also in keeping with Chinese tradition.Based on literature review,current situation analysis,theoretical model establishment,empirical test,conclusion and Suggestions,we made an in-depth study on the influencing factors of grandparents’ participation in skip-generation rearing.(1)First of all,the literature review includes the connotation of skip-generation rearing,the research status of skip-generation rearing and the factors influencing grandparents’ participation in skip-generation rearing,and so on.By sorting out the theoretical support,angle selection and conclusion interpretation of the existing research,and combing out the development vein and key points of the research,We found that there is still a large space for research on the influencing factors of grandparents’ participation in skip-generation rearing,which laid a foundation for this study(2)Secondly,through the screening and collation of fertility and old-age data in the sixth national census,and combined with the results of various national and local social surveys,the present situation of skip-generation raising in China is obtained:(1)The shortage of social child-rearing resources and the quality of child-rearing services make the family have a great demand for skip-generation rearing;(2)The number of grandparents involved in skip-generation rearing is relatively high nationwide.The problems of grandparents’ personal health,leisure,communication,intergenerational family support and social support reflected in the present situation become the basis for this study to sort out the factors influencing grandparents’ participation in skip-generation raising.Based on this,we identified the following four categories of influencing factors:(1)The ability of children to give economic feedback to their grandparents;(2)The feedback intensity of children to grandparents’ life care;(3)the degree of spiritual comfort of children to grandparents’;(4)The reduction of grandparents? own entertainment and leisure.(3)Then,taking the maximum utility of the grandparents? old-age period as the starting point and foothold of the study,the theoretical model was constructed from a microscopic perspective.On the basis of the initial overlapping generation model,we constructed a group of comparative overlapping generation models based on the identified influencing factors of grandparents’ participation or not in skip-generation rearing and the applicability of the model,taking economy and leisure as the main factors to consider.The following equilibrium conditions for grandparents’ participation in skip-generation rearing are obtained: Grandparents will get a certain percentage of their children’s salary for each unit of leisure they devote to their grandchildren.Based on the results of theoretical model analysis,we propose four hypotheses about how participating in skip-generation rearing affects the aging utility of grandparents:(1)Skip-generation rearing has a positive effect on children’s income;(2)Skip-generation rearing has a positive effect on child support feedback;(3)The effect of skip-generation rearing on child support feedback is multiplicative;(4)Skip-generation rearing reduces grandparents’ leisure in the old-age period.(4)Finally is the empirical part of this research,the data used in this part of is CHARLS(China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study)data in 2015.By making descriptive statistics of the interviewed grandparents in the database according to their participation or not in Skip-generation rearing,we compared the differences between the two different groups in age,gender,education,marital status and health status.Next,design variables for the test of each hypothesis.The control variables included grandparents? "gender","residential address type","education level","marital status","age" and "self-rated health";The corresponding explanatory variable of hypothesis 1,2 and 4 is "no skip-generation rearing",and the explanatory variable of hypothesis 3 is "looking after grandchildren for a long time".For interpreted variables,hypothesis 1,4 corresponding to the "income level of children and their spouses" and grandparents "last month undefined activity frequency",hypothesis 2,3 corresponding to the "financial support of children in the previous year".In order to illustrate whether the hypothesis is valid or not,and to understand the influence of grandparents’ participation in skip-generation rearing on their aging effect from a partial and overall perspective,we used stata software to match the data corresponding to each variable required for hypothesis testing from the database,and tested each hypothesis one by one with the combination of multiple Logit model.Through the establishment and comparative analysis of the theoretical model of whether grandparents participate in skip-generation raising from the micro perspective,it is concluded that grandparents participate in skip-generation raising out of the motivation of exchanging with their children,that is,they exchange their time investment for economic feedback from their children,and grandparents have the expected exchange rate.At the same time,after testing the validity of the four hypotheses,this study draws the following conclusions:(1)The main influencing factors of grandparents? participation in skip-generation raising include the expected feedback ability and feedback level of their children,and the leisure time of their own old age.(2)The participation of grandparents in skip-generation raising has a significant positive effect on the income level of offspring;(3)It has a positive effect on the feedback of offspring,but there is no obvious multiplier positive effect;(4)Taking activity frequency as the measure of grandparents’ leisure,then the participation in skip-generation raising has an increasing effect on grandparents’ leisure in old age.Finally,on the basis of theoretical analysis and empirical test conclusion,and combined with the current situation of the skip-generation raising in China,this study proposes targeted countermeasures and suggestions from two aspects of social supporting service construction of the skip-generation raising and family pension policy formulation.The innovation of this research lies in the perspective of the maximization of the micro-individual self-interest of the grandparents as the starting point and the foothold.And the method combines the theoretical model with the empirical test.The theoretical model is a group of utility comparison models adapted to this study based on the overlapping model of the initial generation,so as to compare the changes in the utility of grandparents’ participation in skip-generation raising and get the key influencing factors of their participation in skip-generation raising.Based on the theoretical model and empirical test results,it is concluded that grandparents and children reach an agreement on the exchange terms of skip-generation raising,which is mutually beneficial in the process of realization.This explains the universality of skip-generation raising from the perspective of deep influencing factors,and also gives the grandparents who are about to make the decision of skip-generation raising the category of consideration and the power of thought. |
