Geography of the family and grandparenting

This paper is an extract from ch. 2 of my PhD dissertation at Essex.

Abstract: I discuss a theoretical model for the relation between unpaid caregiving and the distance at which adult children choose to live with respect to their parents. Differently from previous literature, which focused on elderly care, I introduce a stage where parents look after their adult children's offspring. In the case of two siblings, a new set of equilibria arises where both choose to live at the same distance from the parental home, but within a critical value. This allows them to share both the help with childcare during the initial stages of their life, and assistance to the elderly parent later on.