Which Grandparents Matter? Gender-Specific Grandparent Effects

Despite of growing interests in multigenerational mobility research in recent years, we have little
understanding of how gender may matter for the process of status transmissions across
generations. Given women’s longevity and greater exposure to their children and grandchildren,
we might expect maternal grandmothers to have a stronger influence on grandchildren’s
outcomes. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and consistent with this expectation,
I find that maternal grandmothers’ education has a stronger association with grandchildren’s
education than the other three grandparents do, but only for grandsons not granddaughters. This
paper emphasizes the importance of incorporating gender in studying multigenerational
processes and influences and considers potential mechanisms behind grandparent effects.