In rural China, grandparents play an essential role caring for the offspring of their migrant children. Evidence is mixed as to whether caring for grandchildren provides health benefits or incurs health costs. In this paper we examined the impact of caregiving for grandchildren on grandparents’ cognitive health, and remittances from migrant children as a resource that potentially buffers the impact of high intensity caregiving. Data derived from six waves (2001–2015), and we constructed 2,853 person-interval observations from 1,067 respondents to examine lagged change in cognitive ability. Results suggest that caregiving intensity is not by itself damaging to the cognitive health of grandparents, but does appear to be harmful in the context of high intensity custodial care not economically supported by adult children. These results are discussed in terms of their relevance to intergenerational reciprocity, time-for-money exchange expectations, and the need for sufficient financial resources among caregiving grandparents in rural China.
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