The “Sandwich Generation” Revisited: Global Demographic Drivers of Care Time Demands

Generational overlap affects the care time demands on parents and grandparents worldwide. Here, we present first global estimates of experience simultaneously having frail older young children (“sandwichness”) or grandchildren (“grandsandwichness”) for 1970–2040 cohorts, using demographic methods microsimulations. We find that sandwichness is more prevalent in Global South—for example, almost twice as sub-Saharan Africa it Europe 1970 cohort—but expected to decline globally by one-third between 2040. The North might have reached a peak simultaneous from multiple generations but duration grandsandwich state will increase up one year Asia. This increasing generational implies over entire adult life course, also opens an opportunity full potential grandparenthood materialize.