Since the Start of the Great Recession, More Children Raised by Grandparents

One child in ten in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

About four-in-ten (41%) of those children who live with a grandparent (or grandparents) are also being raised primarily by that grandparent,1 according to the Census data.

This figure -- 2.9 million children2 -- rose slowly throughout the decade and it, too, spiked from 2007 to 2008. In that single year, there was a 6% increase.

via Since the Start of the Great Recession, More Children Raised by Grandparents - Pew Social & Demographic Trends.