The Effect of Transition to Grandparenthood on Psychological Well-being

Using a life course theoretical framework, this study intends to examine whether the experience of becoming a grandparent for the first time in life will have an independent effect on depression. Since most of the previous studies on grandparents in Korea tend to focus on their role as a caregiver for their grandchildren using cross-sectional data, this study is assessed to have its value as the first attempt to figure out the genuine effect of transition to grandparenthood on psychological well-being using longitudinal data. Data came from the first and second waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSa), which includes in-depth information from personal interviews conducted in 2006 (Time 1) and 2008 (Time 2) with a nationally representative sample of 10,254 middle-to-old aged Koreans over 45 years old. The analytic sample for this study will consist of respondents who became grandparents for the first time between Time 1 and Time 2. For the analysis, lagged dependent variable (LDV) model will be estimated by OLS regression using STATA, and the finding is expected to show an independent effect of the transition event of becoming a grandparent on the depression level of middle-to-old aged Koreans.