Arpino, BrunoBordone, Valeria2017-04-052017-04-052015-01http://hdl.handle.net/10230/30794A considerable proportion of older people regularly care for their grandchildren. This role in later life may subtract time and energies from participation in social activities, which are considered fundamental for active ageing. Using an instrumental variable approach on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we test whether regular grandchild care reduces participation in social activities. Our results show a significant negative effect on the number of activities in which grandmothers participate. When considering the activities separately by type, we find a negative effect on engagement in educational or training courses for both grandfathers and grandmothers, while a negative effect on volunteering and participating in political or community-related organization is additionally found only for grandmothers. These results stimulate the debate on active ageing to consider possible competition between grandchild care and participation in social activities.application/pdfengThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properlyattributed.info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaperGrandchild careSocial participationIntergenerational transfersInstrumental variablesSHAREinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess