Kristin Anderson Moore, Laura Lippman, Camille Whitney Child Trends Brad Wilcox University of Virginia 1

 The WFMP has three primary intellectual goals:  Monitoring the health of marriage & family around the globe  Analyzing the social, cultural, and economic forces affecting marriage & family across the world  Explaining how strong families foster child well-being around the globe 2

 What are the unique strengths & challenges facing families, not just in the Western world, but also in the non-Western world?  The extended family in Africa, Asia, & the Middle East  HIV-AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa  How can we help indigenous groups & organizations build on these strengths & face these challenges? 3

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 The World Family Map Prototype serves 3 important purposes:  Provides a model of the kinds of data monitoring & analysis the WFMP is capable of  Provides an overview of 3 key global family trends  Affords a sense of the project’s potential 5

The World Family Map Project will report on four types of family indicators:  Family structure  Family culture  Family process  Family economics

After reviewing the available data, 3 key global family indicators were selected for the prototype report:  Family structure – Children living with two biological parents  Family culture – Attitudes toward marriage  Family process – Domestic Violence

How data sources were selected:  Representing regions of the world  Several indicators in the data set  Rigorous and repeated measures over time  Comparable across countries  Surveys with same items and data collection procedures across countries  Or, data are harmonized across countries

 How we selected countries:  Regional representation  Developing and developed countries  Data available for desired time period

 Motivation:  A large body of social scientific evidence indicates children in the U.S. do best with both biological parents.  The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child holds a child shall have “as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.” 10

 Measure: The percentage of children living with two probable biological parents  Countries (16)  Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia  Europe: Great Britain, Spain, Sweden  Latin America: Colombia, Mexico, Peru  Middle East: Egypt  North America: Canada, United States  Oceania: Australia  Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, South Africa  Data sources: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Census data (IPUMS), plus country sources: circa year 2000

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Possible explanations for why higher proportions of children live with both biological parents in Asia and the Middle East than in other regions:  Asian and Middle Eastern countries retain more traditional family structure and are more family oriented  Sub-Saharan Africa: HIV-AIDS has orphaned many children; fathers migrate to work and kinship system has strong maternal focus  N. America/Europe/Oceania are more individualistic  Latin America has history of informal unions and increasing single parenthood

 Motivation:  Much of the developed world is in the midst of an international retreat from marriage marked by increases in cohabitation, divorce, illegitimacy, and lifelong singleness  Are these demographic shifts paralleled by declines in public support for marriage? 14

 Measure: Percentage of adults who disagree that “marriage is an outdated institution”  Countries (20)  Asia: China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore  Europe: Great Britain, Spain, Sweden  Latin America: Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru  Middle East: Egypt, Saudi Arabia  North America: Canada, United States  Oceania: Australia, New Zealand  Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, South Africa  Source: World Values Survey, circa year 2000

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Findings in context of other patterns and research  Countries with more economic development and individualistic ethos tend to have lower rates of marriage  Religion is one likely source of variation in rates of support for marriage ▪ Egypt, Indonesia, and the U.S. have higher rates of support and more religious populations  History of high cohabitation rates in parts of Latin America and maternal focus of families in Sub-Saharan Africa

 Motivation:  Witnessing or experiencing physical violence in the home is associated with a range of social and psychological problems among children  The international community is largely united in its moral opposition to domestic violence High rates of exposure to domestic violence reported by youth

 Measure: Percentage of youth (ages 9-18) reporting violence at home  Countries  Conducted in over 70 countries  Only in the regions of East Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and Latin America  Data Source: UNICEF children’s opinion polls,

High rates of exposure to domestic violence reported by youth

Findings in context of other research  Economic: poverty is associated with domestic violence, which could help explain higher rates in less developed countries  Cultural: Higher rates in Latin America may be related to culture of “machismo”, and in East Asia and the Pacific to cultural traditions of patriarchal authority  Legal: laws banning corporal punishment appear to have reduced rates of corporal punishment in Europe, and may also have reduced the prevalence of domestic violence High rates of exposure to domestic violence reported by youth

 Motivation for choosing this analysis  The WFMP Advisors chose to focus on education for this first analysis  Education is one of the most important outcomes for children  It is one of the United Nations Millennium Goals to achieve universal primary education

 Measures for analysis  Outcome: Whether secondary school-age youth (11-14) are enrolled in school  Predictor: Number of the youth’s biological parents in the household  Data Source  Demographic and Health Surveys ▪ Data from most recent year for each country

 Countries and years included in the analysis  Egypt – 2000  India –  Kenya – 2003  Nigeria – 2003  Peru – 2000  Colombia – 2005 Does the # of biological parents at home relate to school attendance?

 Hypothesis 1: Two biological parents are better than one  Youth living with two biological parents will attend school at higher rates than those living with one  Hypothesis 2: Mother knows best  Youth living with one biological parent will attend school at higher rates than those living with two  Hypothesis 3: Parents don’t matter

Discussion of the findings  Why is living with a single biological parent a disadvantage ONLY in Colombia, after controls? ▪ Family structure may be less related to school attendance than other factors in developing countries ▪ Single parents in Africa and Asia may tend to control resources and devote them to children ▪ Single parents may be getting help from extended family, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia ▪ Biological fathers may be less involved in their children’s education in some countries, compared to intact families in North America  Living with no biological parent is a disadvantage compared to with living with 2 bio parents across the globe. As this % increases, we must monitor its effects.

 The WFMP will assemble an International Board of Advisors  The WFMP will launch its inaugural World Family Map © in late 2010 or early  The project will release periodic indicator reports as well as about 2 analytical briefs each year 30