For the future of our grandchildren: grandparenthood and climate change concerns

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

November 1, 2026

Summary:

Concerns about offspring’s life quality are often cited as a motivation for caring about climate change. This paper investigates the hypothesized causal effect of grandparenthood on climate change worries, using panel data surveys among British families. Specifically, we study whether becoming a grandparent increases these worries. We employ two different study designs to deal with endogeneity of grandparenthood. Across designs, the assumptions required to identify causal effects differ and are non-nested but give a remarkably congruent result: We find no empirical support for a relationship between grandparental status and concerns about climate change.

Published in

European Economic Review

Volume

Volume: 190:105482

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2026.105482

ISSN

00142921

Subjects

Notes

© 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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