Seven per cent of grandparents share a home with grandchildren in Canada. (YouTube)
More than 650,000 children, or seven per cent of Canadians under age 24, live in the same household as their grandparents, and in half of those households, grandparents help pay the bills.
Nine per cent of those children – about 58,500 – lived only with their grandparents, without a parent in the household, according to new figures from Statistics Canada.
The study, based on data from the 2011 Household Survey, shows many multi-generational households rely on grandparents for some kind of financial contribution.
About half of these grandparents contributed to the household bills, with those living with single parents or those raising the children without parents in the home most likely to be paying at least part of the shot.
Among the 600,000 grandparents living with extended family:
- 80 per cent who were raising children alone made a financial contribution.
- 75 per cent of those who lived with a single mother or father made a financial contribution.
- 28 per cent of those who lived with grandchildren and both parents contributed.
Grandparents with an aboriginal identity were more likely to be raising grandchildren without a parent present and to have more responsibilities for household payments, Statistics Canada found.
The study underlines the importance of family for financial stability for many Canadian households.
It follows on findings last week that as many as one third of first-time homebuyers may have had help for the down payment from family.
Aboriginal, Punjabi families
It also highlights cultures that prefer to have grandparents live with them. There were seven million grandparents in Canada in 2011 and only eight per cent of them lived in a household with their grandchildren.
But among immigrants who’d come to Canada within the last five years, 21 per cent had one or several grandparents living with them.
Among Punjabi families, 44 per cent had grandparents in their home.
Multigenerational families were also more common in Nunavut (24 per cent of households) or in aboriginal homes (20 per cent).
