These Baby-Chasing Grandparents Are Turbocharging Demographic Shifts

Gillian Held wanted her daughter to grow up around her grandparents. But moving from suburban Orlando back to New Jersey would have meant downsizing. So last year, Gillian’s parents sold their house and relocated to Florida several months before baby Nora was born.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be Grandpa on a screen,’” said David Held, a retired New York City police officer who now helps watch his 7-month-old granddaughter two days a week.

Baby chasers are one of the cuddlier demographic trends contributing to America’s southward migration, a shift that is shaping everything from home building to municipal finance. Retirees have long sought out Southern states’ warmer weather and year-round golfing. Lower living costs and ample jobs have prompted a decade-long population boom in the South, and now those states boast a new attraction for many older Americans: their grandchildren.

Decades of rising stock prices and home values have left older Americans with much of the nation’s wealth, Federal Reserve data show. High mortgage rates are no obstacle to longtime homeowners who can sell their paid-off houses and buy new ones without a mortgage. In an era of more-flexible work, relocation doesn’t have to mean retirement. When grandparents live nearby, families can spend less on child care—and eldercare.

Housing-research firm Zonda publishes a yearly Baby Chaser Index ranking cities by growth in residents 25 to 44 and 60 to 79. Austin, Texas, Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., topped last year’s list. Ali Wolf , the firm’s chief economist, first heard about the trend six or seven years ago from home builders: “They would say, ‘We sold a house to a millennial and then we sold a house to their parents.’”

It all started in the 1960s, when baby boomers became the first generation to routinely move hundreds of miles for school or work, said Andrew Carle, who oversees a program in senior-living administration at Georgetown University. For much of the 20th century, parents in the U.S. raised their children close to where they grew up—at least those parents who hadn’t emigrated to escape persecution or dire poverty.

“We went away to college, we moved multiple times for our jobs,” said Carle, who is in his mid-60s. “We could move anywhere but we are choosing to move closer to our adult kids.”

A new job and lower home prices prompted Alonzo Emery ’s daughter and son-in-law to move with their two children from San Mateo, Calif., to the Austin area a decade ago. Emery, a retired vocational training program administrator, and his wife, Mary, followed two years later after a third grandchild was born needing medical treatment.

Texas’ culture and weather have been an adjustment for the couple, and they miss their son and son-in-law in California. But Emery, a former Arizona State University running back, gets to attend his 14-year-old grandson’s football games. He and Mary are learning dance moves from their 11-year-old granddaughter. “She’s put us on video,” said Emery, 73.

Moves like the Emerys’ have wide-ranging impacts for home building and even city budgets. The nation’s fastest-growing city is now the Austin suburb of Georgetown, Texas, where almost a fifth of the population lives in a single massive age-restricted housing community. This year, the city nabbed a triple-A bond rating.

The median age of repeat home buyers hit 61 this year, a four-decade high, according to the National Association of Realtors, with the most commonly cited reason for selling being the desire to be closer to family or friends. Twenty-one of last year’s 50 fastest-selling planned communities have built or are building age-restricted areas inside larger all-ages developments, according to consultant RCLCO.

Nashville, Tenn.-based Kinloch Partners, which rents out homes near large corporate offices in the Southeast, estimates that the retired parents of newly transferred executives live in around 10% of them.

“They have a guaranteed income. They don’t trash the house,” said Chief Executive Bruce McNeilage. Some pay a year of rent upfront.

For young families, the value of a nearby grandparent keeps growing. Child-care costs are up 6.4% over the past two years to a median monthly price of around $1,500 in major metro areas. The share of mothers with a child under 3 who work has risen over the past three decades to 66% last year from 58%, according to the Labor Department.

Gillian Held and her husband, Jordan, employ a nanny three days a week. Her parents take Tuesdays and Wednesdays, staying overnight at the couple’s home, where they have their own bedroom.

“We fully talk to them like they’re employees,” said Gillian, 32. “It’s an ongoing joke that when they want to go on vacation they have to take PTO.”

David and Cynthia Held , both 62, had long toyed with the idea of retiring to Florida. New Jersey’s cold winters and high living costs were wearing on them. Then in 2019, the Helds lost their son, Gillian’s brother Craig, to suicide at age 30. Living close to their daughter came to feel even more important.

By the end of 2022, Gillian and Jordan were married and talking about becoming parents. Home values where the Helds lived in Monmouth County, N.J., had shot up 27% over the previous two years, according to Zillow . David and Cynthia sold their house and moved in with Gillian in October 2023. A few months later, Cynthia fell in love with a place in a 55-and-over community in Port St. Lucie. They paid in cash.

The economics can be tougher for would-be baby chasers with grandchildren in the Northeast. Retired professor and author Michelle Herman and her husband are planning a move from Columbus, Ohio, to the New York City area to help raise future grandchildren. “Financially it makes zero sense,” she said.

There can be other snags. Herman contributes to a parenting advice column and recently counselled families considering a move to come to a clear understanding about how much child care the grandparents will provide. Grandparents should also do their own soul-searching before they relocate and have realistic expectations, she said.

“I actually have known people who’ve done this and came back because it didn’t work out,” Herman said.

—Nicole Friedman contributed to this article.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

These Baby-Chasing Grandparents Are Turbocharging Demographic Shifts

From Austin, Texas, to Charleston, S.C., golf and grandbabies beckon

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.