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This study uses nationally representative longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to examine the prevalence and predictors of extended family households among children in the United States and to explore variation by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (SES). Findings suggest that extended family households are a common living arrangement for children, with 35 per cent of youth experiencing this family structure before age 18. Racial/ethnic and SES differences are substantial: 57 per cent of Black and 35 per cent of Hispanic children ever live in an extended family, compared with 20 per cent of White children. Further, 47 per cent of children whose parents did not finish high school spend time in an extended family, relative to 17 per cent of children whose parents earned a bachelor's degree or higher. Models of predictors show that transitions into extended families are largely a response to social and economic needs.

Labour migration leads to significant changes in origin areas. The separation of migrants from the family unit, whether it is nuclear or extended, has profound implications for family organization and for individual family members. We examined the relationship between men’s labour migration and the decision-making autonomy of women who stay behind. The data for our analyses came from a 2006 survey of 1680 married women from 56 rural villages in southern Mozambique. We find that both men’s cumulative migration history and current migration status are positively associated with women’s autonomy. The results suggest that the impact of men’s labour migration on women’s autonomy may persist even after the man’s return. Three intervening factors — women’s employment outside the home, lower fertility, and residential independence from extended family members—did not fully mediate the effects of men’s labour migration. This is consistent with a “direct” impact of men’s absence on women’s autonomy.

Using a longitudinal data-set (the China Health and Nutrition Survey) we explored the effect of various economic factors, including household wealth, employment sector, and involvement in a household business on the division of extended families in China’s transitional economy. Results from event history analyses suggest that these economic factors act as either a dividing or a unifying force on the extended family. Household wealth reduces the risk of family division, but the effect is weaker for families in which parents have upper secondary education. In addition, an extended family is more likely to divide when married children work in the state sector. Further, the probability of family division is higher in families where daughters-in-law work in the state sector than in those with sons in this sector. Finally, involvement in a household business for married children increases family stability.

The large multi-generation household has been a popular subject in the study of Chinese social history. This study compares outcomes of computer micro-simulation with results from genealogical research, and is particularly concentrated on the potential pattern of multi-generation co-residence in the past. On the basis of such a comparison, questions concerning the impact of demographic conditions on the formation and composition of large multi-generation households, the change in lifetime residential experiences of each individual, and the use of genealogical records in the study of Chinese social demographic history are also examined.

Summary This paper examines the impact of the demographic transition upon the potential supply of, and demand for, family support for the aged in Australia. Using census and survey information on population cohorts entering old age, comparisons are drawn concerning their surviving issue, household composition and family membership. Long-term changes in fertility are shown to have had only a small impact upon the supply of potential carers among relatives and, although the demographic transition has led to a more universal inclusion of old people in family networks, there have not been major changes through time in the proportions living in extended family households. Short-term changes, however, such as low fertility during the 1930s, have caused disordered cohort flow, with the result that current generations of the elderly are members of deprived cohorts in terms of their access to family support.

Summary Previous research on the relationship between extended family residence and fertility has produced conflicting findings. In the present paper, we avoid a major shortcoming of past work by focusing on residence and fertility at a given stage of the life-cycle, i.e. the stage following first marriage. Results show that residence with husband's parents reduces age at marriage. Residence with wife's parents shows no such consistent effect. No evidence was found to support the claim that extended family residence consistently affects the length of the interval between marriage and the first birth. These findings are consistent across four cultural/ethnic groups.

In a review of census data for the periods 1945-54 and 1955-63, Burch discloses an increasing tendency for average household sizes to cluster at five to six members for developing nations, compared to three to four for developed nations.(1) Also, among developing nations he finds less than 50% of the population living in households containing three to six persons. This apparently contradicts Levy's general rule which prompted his study, that 'for well over 50% of the members of ... all known societies in world history' actual family size and composition have varied much less than would be expected, given ideal rules of residence which can vary from the classical extended family of Asian renown and European history to the small 'isolated' nuclear family of the modernized West.(2).

Japanese household structure has changed dramatically over the last two decades, especially with regard to multi-generational co-residence. In this paper, we use logit analysis to investigate the extent to which married Japanese men and women aged 30 to 59 live with their parents and, in particular, how socio-economic and demographic characteristics are associated with co-residence. For men, being the eldest child, being in a lower-status occupation, living in a small town or rural area, being in an arranged marriage, and having a parent without a spouse are all positively associated with co-residence. For women, only demographic variables matter – being the eldest child, having a husband who is not the eldest child, and having a parent without a spouse, lead to a higher probability of co-residence with own parents. For those middle-aged Japanese who are not co-residing with their parents, we analyse the frequency of seeing and telephoning their parents and find that the distance between the residences of...

Co-residence of a married couple with the husband's parents continues to be an important aspect of family life in Taiwan. This form of household extension continues despite Taiwan's industrialization and convergence with a Western model of consumption, and despite the increase in the prevalence of nuclear households over the past twenty years. Increases in nuclear units are associated primarily with declines in proportions living in households that are extended both laterally and across generations, while the percentage living with a parent in a stem household has declined only modestly since 1973. In all, declines in co-residence notwithstanding, in 1985 nearly half the respondents resided in extended units. In 1985, as in 1980, a history of residence in an extended household was related to more traditional reproductive behaviour.

The model developed in this paper extends Bongaartss nuclear family model into a general one that accounts for both nuclear and 3 generation families and which is expected to be more widely applicable. In the paper a simulation and comparison of 2 cohorts of women who are assumed to live out their lives under demographic conditions of China in 1950-70 and 1981 is presented. The status distribution and expected years spent in different parities marital statuses being the child of surviving parent(s) being a parent of living children and having responsibility for both elderly parent(s) and young children etc. are given. The consequences of the dramatic demographic changes are clearly demonstrated. (authors)

Examination of the fertility patterns of a sample of white Detroit couples at selected stages of the family life cycle indicates that, in a large American metropolis, family income is more closely related to the time when a family is formed and has its children than to the number of children it expects to have. In a longitudinal study, current income is strongly related to the timing of demographic events-the age at marriage, whether pre-maritally pregnant, the time interval from marriage to a given parity, and fertility during a two-year follow-up period. This paper also explores the hypothesis that a family's evaluation of its economic position and the choices it makes about important family expenditures has a relation to fertility apart from the family's objective current income level. Couples who consider their income adequate for their needs or relatively greater than that of their friends or peers, and those who expect substantial increases in the future, tend to expect more children than those who do not. Small but consistent differences obtain over the parities studied. Variables indexing alternative family expenditure patterns, such as cars, or savings for college education for children, are associated with lower family size expectations and longer spacing patterns.

In order to provide supplementary information for an investigation of population attitudes in the higher socio-economic stratum of Ghana's urban population, a survey was undertaken of students at the University of Ghana. The 300 students, who formed a sample of three-elevenths of the student body, were asked questions about the financing of their education, financial obligations to relatives and their attitudes to these obligations. Other questions sought to determine the effect of the pattern of obligations upon desire to restrict family size, and the likely effect of changes in the national social welfare system upon such desires. The students were mostly males and nearly all over 20 years of age. Two-fifths had previously worked for their living. Almost nine-tenths has received considerable private financial assistance in the course of their education and 60% of those receiving money regarded it as a specific debt to be repaid. Five-sixths expected to help support relatives beyond their own sp...

Extract In their recent paper in this journal M. and Carol Vlassoff are to be commended for helping to remedy the dearth of empirical studies on the old-age security motive for children (and particularly sons) in rural areas of developing countries.(1) However, while the questionnaire which they applied to 357 ever-married men in a rural village in Maharashtra state in India is potentially useful, several of the conclusions they derive from it are unwarranted and, if left unquestioned, would undoubtedly have the effect of setting back the serious investigation of the effects of this motive rather than furthering it. The invalid or at least questionable inferences are taken up one at a time in the order of their appearance

This paper evaluates the evidence for the existence of a social custom believed to be important in influencing the fertility of older women in traditional societies. In such a system it is improper for a woman to continue sexual relations once she attains (potential) grandmotherhood. Thus, the hypothesis is that such a change in familial status leads to reduction in marital fertility. The hypothesis is tested with World Fertility Survey data using bivariate and logit regression analysis. The results support the custom's existence in Nepal and Bangladesh, but probably not in Sri Lanka. Its demographic impact, in terms of reduction in total fertility rate, amounts to about one-third of a child in Nepal and Bangladesh, but is insignificant in Sri Lanka. Its effect on the age pattern of natural fertility, estimated by using Nepalese data, is also large, thus indicating its importance as an explanation for deviations from Coale and Trussell's standard of natural fertility.

Two aspects of the family in relation to fertility in developing countries are discussed: set stratification within the family and extended family networks. As both these are central to J. C. Caldwell's theory of fertility transition, the paper is structured as a critique of his position. Drawing on examples and data from Asia, it is argued that the causal significance of sex stratification for fertility lies in the economic risks it imposes on women, deriving from their dependence on men, rather than, as Caldwell suggests, in the disproportionate gain that men derive from their dominant position within families. While Caldwell and others associate strong extended family networks of mutual obligation and support with persistent high fertility, it is argued here that such systems should, instead, facilitate fertility decline. Close-knit and strong kin networks can be viewed as alternatives to children as sources of insurance, and may facilitate fertility decline by preventing children from becoming the focal point of parental concerns for security.

There has been a decrease in the proportion of young couples beginning married life in Taiwan living with the husbands parents and the period of coresidence has become shorter for members of recent cohorts. Nevertheless a large majority of couples still do begin married life living with the husbands parents and most parents live with at least 1 married son. Couples who do not live with the parents are usually linked to them by visiting and remittances. The persistence of traditional family forms is greater than expected in view of the very rapid pace of other social and economic changes and the almost universal practice of modern contraception. Traditional familial forms are especially prevalent among rural farm and less educated strata. The longer the period of extended coresidence the higher is desired and actual family size and the smaller the proportion using contraception for spacing. Data used is from the Taiwan KAP-V fertility survey based on a probability sample with 3816 respondents of all married couples in which the wife was between 20 and 39 years old in 1980. (authors modified)

In the new economic approach to fertility behavior it is argued that as children become more expensive fewer will be born. The theory identifies the value of human time as the most important component of the price of children. Since the bearing and rearing of children is a time-intensive activity for the mother her calculation of time is believed to be a crucial determinant of household fertility. In this paper the proposition is tested by using survey data from Sierra Leone. 3 alternative models are used to measure the value of womens time. In the 1st value of the mothers time is measured by her educational attainment. In the 2nd the womans current monthly income is assumed to indicate the value of her time. In the 3rd value of time is treated as an endogenous variable determined by the households socioeconomic characteristics. The households anticipated child mortality rate and its extended family characteristics are introduced as other important determinants of fertility in Sierra Leone. It is believed that with the inclusion of these latter variables the husehold model becomes better suited to explain fertility behavior in a developing society. The salient statistical results indicate that the number of children born in a family is negatively influenced by the housewifes current income and positively related to the incidence of anticipated child mortality and the size of the extended family. (Authors)

The extended family has been an essential part of Chinese society, both in cultural ideal and social reality.(1) The traditional Chinese ideal has been for co-residence of parents with their married sons and their families in a large, joint-stem household unit. The reality, in Taiwan and elsewhere, has deviated from the ideal in several ways. First, for any given young couple, relatives necessary for a joint-stem family may not be available at one or another stage of the family life cycle. Secondly, even when all the necessary relatives are available, the emphasis has been on the vertical filial tie, rather than the horizontal fraternal tie, so the predominant fact has been co-residence of parents with a married son. Married brothers usually-do not live together and, if they do, it is usually when the parent is or has been in the same unit.

A study was undertaken to clarify the factors influencing family size in India particularly the impact on desired family size of desire for survivorship of sons. Indian couples have been highly motivated to produce sons in order that: 1) the family name and property are transmitted 2) economic support be provided 3) emotional and other forms of support be provided 4) religious rites be performed and 5) a large dowry may be received rather than given at marriage. A simulation was designed to see whether son survivorship motivation required large family size in India. 2 runs of the simulation were made: a control run and an experimental run. From the results it is concluded that: 1) If every pair of parents were to practice perfectly effective family planning when son survivorship has been assured the maximum reduction in the model intrinsic rate of increase in India is 24% and 2) Son survivorship is not sufficiently assured until the mother is on average 32.6 years old. Even women with the highest fertility are virtually 30 years old when they assure son-survivorship. It follows that women at ages under 30 or husbands with wives younger than 30 can probably not be persuaded to practice family planning. It is recommended that the hypothesis that intermediate death rates under Indian social and cultural conditions lead to large family sizes and high rates of population growth ought to be explored further.