Groups of people related by consanguinity or affinity (e.g. marriage). Persons who co-reside
Living arrangements are the reflection of demographic and social change. Using historical census data from the United States, Ginevra Floridi and Albert Esteve summarise 170 years of change in household … Read more
Projected population growth of about 2 billion in Africa and elsewhere will contribute to poverty, poor reproductive health, environmental degradation and climate change. Frank Götmark, Chukwuedozie Ajaero, Mohammad Mainul Islam, Rhoda … Read more
Working parents with at least one child who use formal childcare services are not always more likely to have further children. As Jonas Wood shows, the European evidence is mixed, … Read more
First marriage in South Korea has declined sharply over the past three decades. This is not simply a story of later marriage. Even after accounting for delayed timing, Sam Hyun … Read more
Dutch kinship network data, Vera de Bel argues, suggest that the Dutch baby boom has trickled down from one generation to the next, leading to larger numbers of aunts, uncles, … Read more
The emotional consequences of “silver splits” (at age 50 years or over) depend on one’s ties with adult children. When these ties are close, Lisa Jessee and Deborah Carr observe, … Read more
Using four Pakistan Demographic and Health surveys Rashid Javed, Mazhar Mughal and Thierry Lorey find that women married before 18 show stronger son preference and differential fertility stopping patterns. Women’s … Read more
Working mothers who use formal childcare for their first child are more likely to have a second, Jonas Wood says. While part of this effect reflects differences in who uses … Read more
Socioeconomic inequalities shape the ways in which people form families. Denise B. Musni and Christine Schnor show that these inequalities influence women’s likelihood of becoming a mother while single, but … Read more
Drawing on data from 26 European countries, Aude Bernard, Patricia McMullin, and Sergi Vidal uncover a strong association between the number of internal moves and childhood loneliness. Childhood migration and … Read more
Using information from 144 surveys across 34 countries from 1980 to 2020, Pearl Kyei, Samuel Agyei-Mensah, John Casterline and Ayaga Bawah find that the age difference between spouses decreased by … Read more
Marriage and family ties in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are undergoing profound changes. While traditions persist, young people now marry later, fewer cousin marriages occur, and family … Read more
For decades, the majority of Americans have reported ideal family sizes of two children, yet actual birth rates are falling well below reported ideals. Julia Behrman, Emily Marshall, and Florian … Read more
All over the world, child protective services have a duty to deal with cases of child maltreatment. However, even confining research to the Global North, better equipped, in principle, for … Read more
Polygynous unions are on the decline in sub-Saharan Africa, although uncertainty surrounding the prevalence and characteristics of children in these households remains. Emily Treleaven and Emma Banchoff find that the … Read more
Recently, mean paternal ages at childbirth have risen sharply. This has alarmed researchers from a wide range of fields as offspring of older fathers have higher health risks. However, existing … Read more
Stefania Molina’s research reveals that, in Colombia, separated and cohabiting mothers experience higher levels of intimate partner violence during pregnancy than married mothers. Disparities in low birth weight across partnership … Read more
Are grandchildren beneficial to mental health in old age? Using advanced statistical techniques and data from 160,000 individuals across Europe, Elisa Brini and Francesca Zanasi challenge this common belief: family … Read more
America leads the world in single-parent household rates, with the large majority of those households missing a father. Despite the public’s recognition of the importance of two-parent households for children … Read more
America is facing a child care crisis: care services are costly and scarce and fail to meet the needs of families. The majority of U.S. voters, Joseph Chamie opines, feel … Read more
In Malawi, in a trial carried out between 2016 and 2018, children grew taller and exhibited more rapid cognitive development when their mothers’ access to family planning and reproductive health … Read more
Childlessness in Korea is rising due to delayed marriage, increasing singleness and a growing share of childless unions. Misun Lee and Kryštof Zeman show that while more years in education … Read more
Early union formation and motherhood are frequently observed in low- and middle-income countries, where heterogeneity in the timing of family formation is also high. Using Demographic and Health Surveys for … Read more
The introduction of unilateral divorce legislation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to spikes in divorce rates, coincided with rising educational assortative matching into marriage. Geghetsik … Read more
In Italy, grandparents are a fundamental source of care for children, and families are the main source of support for older individuals. Margherita Moretti, Elisa Cisotto and Alessandra De Rose … Read more
What has happened to traditional two-married-parent families in rural America and Canada? Shelley Clark and Matthew Brooks explore changes in rural and urban families over the past three decades to … Read more
Using longitudinal register data for Belgium, Jonas Wood, Leen Marynissen and Dries Van Gasse find that fathers who earn less than their female partners are more likely to use parental … Read more
Living arrangements have changed over the past five decades, leading to a decline of the extended family, growth of the nuclear family and, more recently, the appearance of living alone … Read more
Household structures reflect and affect social, economic, and demographic dynamics. Albert Esteve and Maria Pohl use the new CORESIDENCE database to explore the transformation of households over the last five … Read more
What are the trends in the prevalence of child support agreements in the US? Apparently declining, based on frequently used stock data, but in fact stable or even on the … Read more
Households are important units of social, psychological and economic support for children, and variation in the presence of household members at different times can determine child survival. Ashira Menashe-Oren, Yacouba … Read more
As union dissolution becomes more frequent around the world, the living arrangements of children of separated parents have become an important issue. Joint physical custody (JPC) is believed to be … Read more
Little is known about the composition of kinship groups and family members outside the household, and how this evolves by age and over time. Martin Kolk and colleagues, exploiting exhaustive … Read more
As marriage declines and divorce increases, partnership trends and household composition become increasingly determined by trends in the formation and dissolution of non-marital cohabiting unions. Marika Jalovaara and Linus Andersson … Read more
In addition to their childcare responsibilities, women with young children often have to do more housework, thus making an already unequal balance even more skewed. Zsuzsanna Veroszta shows that, in … Read more
Endogamy (partners of the same geographical origin) is said to lower the risk of marriage dissolution. However, once cohabitation is included in the analysis of Belgian (register) data, Layla Van … Read more
Status exchange is a leading factor behind the rising share of educational hypogamy marriages in India (women marrying less educated men), says Koyel Sarkar. Lower caste women aspire to upward … Read more
Religion has historically been a pronatalist force, but because it fosters traditional gender role attitudes, it could impede a fertility recovery stimulated by gender equity. Instead, Laurie DeRose explains how … Read more
Adult children with siblings can share caring for ageing parents but only children face this responsibility alone. Jenny Chanfreau and Alice Goisis find that adult only children are more likely … Read more
A Norwegian register analysis with control for time-constant individual characteristics shows an association between cohabitation and declining use of primary health care for mental diseases. However, the decline largely occurs … Read more
Spatial proximity among family members may profoundly affect people’s lives. What are the salient features of family dynamics over geographic distance? HwaJung Choi, Robert Schoeni, Hongwei Xu, Adriana Reyes, and … Read more
Generational overlap has mainly been studied for populations in the global North, but it affects care time demands on parents worldwide. Indeed, demographic ‘sandwiching’ is more prevalent in the global … Read more
Young people’s ability to marry increasingly depends on obtaining housing and forming independent households. Ragui Assaad, Caroline Krafft, and Dominique J. Rolando show how Egypt’s 1996 rent liberalization law reversed … Read more
Gender equality in child care can be promoted through individual entitlements to a non-transferable and well-paid leave of equal duration for women and men. While this design is still rare … Read more
More married couples today consist of two high-income or two low-income partners (i.e., income homogamy), which leads to greater income inequality in married-couple families. Yifan Shen shows that, all else … Read more
Zachary Zimmer and Emily Treleaven find a growing global prevalence of households that have grandparents living with grandchildren with middle generation absent. Country-level factors, like labor force participation rates, explain … Read more
Challenging claims of disadvantage in same-sex parented families, Jan Kabátek and Francisco Perales find that same-sex-parented children actually outperform their peers in many areas of academic achievement. Over the last … Read more
Giorgio Di Gessa, Paola Zaninotto and Karen Glaser find that, in England, most grandmothers and grandfathers provide grandchild care throughout the year to allow parents to undertake paid work. However, … Read more
Nowhere in Europe is the share of births out of marriage larger than in Iceland. Nevertheless, most Icelanders marry. In this article Ari Klængur Jónsson argues that even though the … Read more
Philipp M. Lersch studies the relationship between people’s number of siblings and their economic wealth in Germany. He finds that additional siblings reduce wealth by about 38%. Parental wealth moderates … Read more
Hans Hämäläinen and Bruno Arpino investigate short-term reciprocity of intergenerational support from the viewpoint of adult children. They consider multiple forms of support and examine whether previously received support from … Read more
Well targeted policy measures can influence fertility even in times of intensive social and economic change. Analysing data from the Hungarian Generations and Gender Survey, Zsolt Spéder, Lívia Murinkó and … Read more
Examining couples in both the United States and western Germany, Daniela Bellani and Gøsta Esping-Andersen find lower divorce risks when the division of unpaid work is more balanced. This suggests … Read more
In 1996-2000, for the first time in Peru, surgical contraception was promoted among indigenous women, and sometimes imposed upon them. As Marianna Battaglia and Nina Pallarés show, its overall positive … Read more
International migration and family life are frequently difficult to reconcile. Valentina Mazzucato, Djamila Schans, Kim Caarls, and Cris Beauchemin focus on three cases (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, and … Read more
Martin Kolk and Gunnar Andersson study the evolution of same-sex marriages, childbearing and divorce in Sweden. They highlight increases in childbearing and marriage of female couples in particular, and a … Read more
Recent studies have questioned whether family size negatively affects children’s educational outcomes. Based on information from the extended famil, Ea Blaabæk and Joseph Molitoris find that family size has a … Read more
Legalizing same-sex marriage is as an important step toward reducing differences in well-being based on sexual orientation. For example, the subjective well-being of individuals in same-sex couples increased following legalizationin … Read more
Hill Kulu and Tina Hannemann investigated the spread of ethnic intermarriage and co-ethnic marriage across different ethnic minorities in the UK. They found specific socio-economic factors for different ethnic minorities … Read more
Parenthood typically improves people’s life satisfaction, even if only in the short run. Surprisingly, instead, Malgorzata Mikucka finds that a second birth has a negative, albeit temporary, effect on Swiss … Read more
Religious couples tend to have more children than secular ones, suggesting that children add more to the happiness of the former than they do to the latter. Jona Schellekens investigated … Read more
Women are more likely to provide care to multiple family members or friends simultaneously at most ages throughout the life course except at the very oldest ages when gender differences … Read more
In the context of population ageing, work-family reconciliation policies potentially play an important role in supporting both fertility and parental employment. However, the evaluation of such policies remains a challenge. … Read more
Increasing attention is directed towards the ‘diverging destinies’ of children born in different family contexts. One might expect disparities to be small in Nordic welfare states, yet in Finland, as … Read more
Women tend to adapt to their male spouse when families move. Maria Brandén and Karen Haandrikman examine whether this is also true for the moves couples make when forming a … Read more
Cohabitation, nonmarital childbearing, and partnership dissolution are now common in the U.S. Katherine Michelmore and Kelly Musick examine patterns of union instability among couples who have had a child together, … Read more
Using data from the American Community Survey 2008-2014, Zhenchao Qian and Daniel T. Lichter show how assortative mating patterns are subject to local marriage market conditions.They also find that previously … Read more
The increasing popularity of cohabitation has opened a debate on the stability of cohabitations, and especially those in which there is a child. Zuzana Žilinčíková shows that cohabitations have a … Read more
Due to rapid and profound demographic changes, population age structure in Brazil has changed sharply in the past few years. Contrary to widespread belief, however, Maria Carolina Tomás, Everton Emanuel … Read more
Using European panel data from 2003 to 2011 (EU-SILC), Angela Greulich, Mathilde Guergoat-Larivière and Olivier Thévenon show that dual-earner couples are more likely to have a second child than couples … Read more
Consanguinity has important implications for public health as it increases the risk of passing on autosomal recessive genetic disorders to the next generation. Thus, it is important that we learn … Read more
Starting in the late 1980s, new laws concerning same-sex unions were passed, first in Denmark (registered partnerships in 1989) and the Netherlands (marriage in 2001), and then in several other … Read more
Numerous studies have looked at the relationship between family structure and child well-being. Overall, the evidence suggests that children who grow up in a household with two married biological parents, … Read more
Low fertility levels have become a typical characteristic of industrialised countries where two distinct patterns are observed. A number of countries, especially in southern Europe and East Asia, have persistently … Read more
In Kenya, rapid population growth has occurred amidst poor urban governance and limited employment opportunities, leading to widespread urban poverty that is concentrated in informal settlements or slums. In Nairobi, … Read more
“What God has put together let no man put asunder”. This biblical quote is frequently heard among Filipinos, particularly among the older generations, to discourage young people from leaving an … Read more
Formerly synonymous with marriage, cohabitation has become a lasting form of union in France and this country is now among those where the practice is most widespread (Prioux 2009).Moreover, the … Read more
The mid-20th-century was a Golden Age of marriage in Europe and the United States. People married early, usually in their early-to-mid-20s, and often, with over 90% of people marrying at … Read more
Parental separation increases children’s risk of poverty The proportion of children experiencing parental divorce or separation has increased across Western countries. As a result, in 2014 about 16% of children … Read more
En 2005, l’Espagne est devenue le troisième pays de l’Union Européenne à légaliser le mariage pour les personnes du même sexe, après les Pays Bas en 2001 et la Belgique … Read more
The whole world knows and talks about the “one-child” phenomenon in China. Most of this discussion is tied to analyses of the one-child policy instituted by the Chinese government in … Read more
Childhood has gained renewed attention from academics, researchers and policy makers, as evidence shows that this stage of life deeply affects future educational achievements and labour market success (Blanden, Gregg … Read more
If at first you don’t succeed … The first union used to be the one that would last “until death do us part”. The transformation in partnership behaviour emerging in … Read more
While divorce is usually lower in Asian than in Western societies, a drastic rise in crude divorce rates has been reported in many East Asian countries in the recent past … Read more
Co-residence between elderly parents and independent, married adult children is a common phenomenon in East Asian societies. For example, according to the 2005 China Inter-Census Survey data, two thirds of … Read more
The married are happier and more satisfied with their lives than the unmarried (Verbakel, 2012; Gove et al., 1990). Yet, as divorce and cohabitation increase, we may be facing a … Read more
The incidence of divorce, like the incidence of many other demographic phenomena, varies greatly across the life course. Divorce is most prevalent during young adulthood and relatively infrequent among the … Read more
Dear Members and Friends of IUSSP, Welcome to N-IUSSP! It is my pleasure to introduce you to the new official press service of the International Union for the Scientific Study … Read more
The diffusion of cohabitation during the last decades is one of the most striking aspects of wider social changes that have taken place throughout the industrialized world. Over time, the meaning … Read more
The number of children individuals would like to have, or would have liked to have had, also known as personal ideal family size, has been stable in the EU-15 as … Read more