Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit

University of Cape Town

We use panel data collected in metropolitan Cape Town to document the role played by aging parents in caring for the children of children who die. In addition, we quantify the probabilities that older adults and the older adults" children provide financial support to orphaned grandchildren. We find significant transfers of public and private funds to older adults in households with orphans. Perhaps for this reason, we see no difference in expenditure patterns between households with orphans and other older adult households. With respect to older adults" quality of life, we find no effect of reporting that a child died, or of co-residence with orphaned grandchildren, on the older adults" reports of depression, or on their self-assessed health.