December 05, 2024 | News | Award
Kuznets Prize 2025 for Emma Zai and Peter Eibich
Study shows health consequences of grandparents caring for grandchildren
Emma Zai and Peter Eibich won the Kuznet Prize 2025. © MPIDR
Since 2014, the Journal of Population Economics has annually awarded the Kuznets Prize for the best article published in the Journal of Population Economics. This year, the prize goes to Emma Xianhua Zai (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research & GLO) and Peter Eibich (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL & GLO). They received the Best Paper Award 2025 for their Open Access article "Are the grandparents alright? The health consequences of grandparental childcare".
In their paper, the two researchers examine the causal effect of childcare on the health of grandparents in the United States. They exploit the fact that parents of daughters become grandparents earlier and invest more in their grandchildren than parents of sons. The results of the study suggest that childcare has a negative impact on grandparents' physical functioning and subjective health. These effects increase with the intensity of childcare and are particularly pronounced for grandmothers.
The Kuznet Prize is named after Simon Kuznets, a pioneer in population economics, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971.
Eibich, P.; Zai, E.:
Journal of Population Economics 37:71, 1–32. (2024)
