Living with grandkids: Grandparents often cover costs when parents are absent

Approximately half of the grandparents who live with their grandkids offer financial support and help shoulder the burden of running a household, according to Statistics Canada.

Grandparents living with their grandkids are also more likely to take on financial responsibility in situations where one or both parents are not present.

In a report released Tuesday, Statistics Canada says about eight per cent of grandparents over the age of 45 lived with their grandchildren in 2011, according to data gathered from the National Household Survey. About 600,000 grandparents lived in the same home as their grandchildren, in a country of an estimated 7 million grandparents with an average of 4.2 grandchildren each.

The percentage of grandparents living with their grandchildren was significantly higher among recent immigrant, Aboriginal and Inuit populations, with the highest in the country among Canadians who speak Punjabi at home.

Of those grandparents living with their grandchildren, 88 per cent also lived with a person from a middle generation, typically a son, daughter or in-law. These multi-generational households include two parents 54 per cent of the time, a single parent 32 per cent of the time, and involve no parent for the child 12 per cent of the time. StatsCan identified other arrangements three per cent of the time.

Grandparents living with a couple and their kids tended to be responsible for household payments only 28 per cent of the time. However, grandparents living with a single parent contributed far more often, in 75 per cent of cases, while grandparents in a household with no middle generation paid the bills 88 per cent of the time.

Canadians who self-identified as Aboriginal had higher rates of grandparents living with grandchildren. Eleven per cent of Aboriginal grandparents lived with their grandchildren in 2011, while 22 per cent of Inuit grandparents did the same. StatsCan says Aboriginal grandparents were also more likely to live with their grandchildren in skip-generational households where no parent was present.

The StatsCan data found the rate of grandparents living with grandchildren was significantly higher among immigrants to the country who arrived between 2006 and 2011. During that period, 21 per cent of immigrants 45 or older were grandparents who went to live in households where grandchildren were present, StatsCan said.

Multi-generational households were most common among Canadians who speak Punjabi at home. Among this group, 44 per cent of grandparents lived in the same home as their grandchildren, and 89 per cent of the time they lived with a couple as well. StatsCan says these grandparents paid household bills less often that the average, between 22 and 24 per cent of the time.

The federal government launched new measures for its Faster Family Reunification program in February, aimed at helping Canadian immigrants sponsor their parents and grandparents to come to the country from abroad.