How many grandparents have recorded their life stories?

AARP published the full results in The Power of Grandparents in Shaping Younger Generations on September 5, 2025. Among grandparents in the survey:

• 9% have regularly recorded or written down their stories.
• About a quarter have done so a few times.
• 36% plan to.
• 27% are not interested.
• 73% would use technology to capture their stories if it were available.

Grandparents who wanted to record gave three main reasons: creating something meaningful to pass down (46%), helping younger generations learn from their experiences (45%), and preserving family or cultural traditions (35%).

Four times as many grandparents plan to record their stories as do so regularly.

AARP counts written stories as well as recordings and sets no length or completion threshold. It does not say how many grandparents were in the sample.

AARP estimates there are about 65 million grandparents in the U.S., down from roughly 70 million in its 2018 survey. The estimate comes from AARP's analysis of the Census Bureau's 2023 Survey of Income and Program Participation.

The recording survey and this estimate cover different populations, so multiplying one by the other does not give a reliable count of grandparents with unrecorded stories.

A quarter of U.S. adults have a living parent age 65 or older and either a child under 18 or an adult child they supported financially in the past year, according to Pew Research Center. That share was 23% in 2021. The share is 54% among adults in their 40s and 45% among adults in their 50s; the 50s figure was 36% in 2021.

Pew surveyed 8,750 U.S. adults and published the findings on August 27, 2026. Fieldwork ran September 2–8, 2025, per the chart notes (one line of the article says 2026).

Many adults with an aging parent are also raising or supporting children.

In Trust & Will's 2026 Estate Planning Report, 56% of U.S. adults said they had none of five estate-planning documents: a will, a trust, a medical power of attorney, a financial power of attorney, or a HIPAA authorization. The share was 62% among Gen X and 48% among baby boomers.

Talker Research surveyed 5,000 U.S. adults for Trust & Will, an estate-planning company, from January 28 to February 5, 2026.

Formal planning for later life is often put off. This survey did not ask about stories.

Each figure comes from a different sample and asks a different question, and all of them rely on what people report about themselves. Keep each percentage with its own population: the 63% describes grandparents in a survey of adults 50 and older.

For practical next steps, see how to record your parents' life story and why life-story projects stall. Our guides to AI biographers and life-story research cover interview tools and the research on structured life-story programs.

October 27, 2026. First published; every figure checked against its source.