EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:01 A.M. EDT, JULY 1, 1999 (THURSDAY) Public Information 
    Office CB99-115 301-457-3030/301-457-3670 (fax) 301-457-1037 (TDD) e-mail: 
    [email protected] Ken Bryson/Lynne Casper 301-457-2416 Nearly 5.5 Million 
    Children Live with Grandparents, Census Bureau Reports About 5,435,000 
    children, or 7.7 percent of all children in the United States, were living 
    in homes with a grandparent in 1997, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau 
    said today. The findings are part of the Census Bureau's first report on households 
    where grandparents and grandchildren live together. "A grandparent maintains 
    the household in three-fourths of families that have both grandparents and 
    grandchildren," said Ken Bryson, co-author with Lynne M. Casper of Coresident 
    Grandparents and Grandchildren, P23-198. In the remaining one-fourth, 
    parents maintain homes in which grandparents and grandchildren live together. 
    Householders are defined as those in whose name the housing unit is owned 
    or rented. Casper said that grandchildren in certain types of families are 
    more prone to economic hardship. "For example, about two-thirds of grandchildren 
    in homes maintained by a grandmother with no spouse or parents of the grandchildren 
    present are in poverty," Casper said. Grandparent-maintained households differ 
    from parent-maintained households in many other ways. The report contrasts 
    grandparent- and parent-maintained families where grandchildren live with 
    grandparents: _________________________________________________________________________ 
    Grandparent-maintained families Parent-maintained families with grandchildren 
    with grandparents and grandchildren Half of these families consist Only 
    13 percent of these families of both a grandmother and grandfather; have both 
    a grandmother and most of the others (43 percent) have grandfather living 
    there, while a grandmother with no husband. 70 percent of such families have 
    only a grandmother present. Only 15 percent of the grandmothers Half the grandmothers 
    and and 21 percent of the grandfathers 56 percent of the grandfathers are 
    65 or older. are 65 or older. A majority of both grandfathers Only a third 
    of the grandfathers (72 percent) and grandmothers and a quarter of the grandmothers 
    (56 percent) are employed. are employed. Half the grandchildren in such Only 
    a third of the grandchildren families are under age 6. are under age 6. About 
    27 percent of the grandchildren About 17 percent of the are poor. grandchildren 
    are poor. A third of the grandchildren have Only 19 percent of the no health 
    insurance. grandchildren have no health insurance. ___________________________________________________________________________ 
    The report notes that Census 2000 will include a multi-part question addressing 
    the issue of grandparents as caregivers. Data are from the March 1997 Current 
    Population Survey. As in all surveys, the estimates are subject to sampling 
    variability and other sources of error. -X- The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent 
    collector and disseminator of timely, relevant and quality data about the 
    people and the economy of the United States, conducts a population and housing 
    census every 10 years, an economic census every five years and more than 100 
    demographic and economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the 
    first census in 1790.