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The glory of grandparents
Why the soaring number of grandmas and grandpas is a good thing
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The number of grandparents in the world has roughly trebled since 1960, to 1.5 billion.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
The Economist
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Demographic change, like continental drift, is too gradual to be visible day by day but eventually it shakes the world.
People live two decades longer than they did in 1960, and women have half as many children. One of the many ways in which this has transformed family dynamics concerns grandparents. There are a lot more of them, and they each have fewer grandchildren to dote on.
