1. Evolution of the family
A disappearing entity?

2. Families and households
Households: socioeconomic and physical units consisting of individuals who live together (sharing budget and meals)
Families: member of hh related by blood, marriage or adoption
A family does not comprise more than one hh but many families can reside in one hh

3. Some difficulties
Kin (blood) ties may be spread over many households are linked together (and sharing budgets and decision-making)
Individuals may spend time in different households as they grow up though they belong to one family
Birth of new household implies physical separation not just a marriage

4. Type of households Solitary: single individuals
Nuclear: couple + children
Extended (stem): two-three generations
(example: grandparents, parents, children)
Complex: multiple
(example: grandparents, two married siblings and spouses and children)

5. Importance of families
Child-caring takes place within hh and families
Socialization takes place within hh and families
Early child influences are set by family life
Demography: (mort/fert/migr) takes place within hh and families
Economics:
Distribution of output
Division of labor
Risk Insurance (women, children, elderly)
Emotional support

6. Are families disappearing?
What implications for human species? Has the new family an evolutionary advantage?

7. The ingredients out of which we manufacture households
The distribution hh by type is a product of two ingredients:
Individual (societal) preferences (demand side)
Demographic constraints (supply side)
Mortality
Marriage - Fertility
Migration

8. The effects of mortality: probability of having both GP’s alive (assumptions: childbearing at 25)
Life expectancy = 30
Prob at x =0…. .41
Prob at x =5… .30
Prob at x=10… .21
Prob at x=15… .12
Life expectancy=80
Prob at x =0…. .97
Prob at x =5… .95
Prob at x=10… .91
Prob at x=15… .85

9. The effects of HIV/AIDS
Orphanhood
Widowhood
Skip-generation households: grandparents and grandchildren with no adult generations
Older female headed households

10. What about effects of marriage or fertility?
Late marriage leads to delayed childbearing and less overlap between generations (less time with uncles and aunts)
Lower fertility: lower number of siblings and cousins

11. Hajnal’s typology: two types of families and households
Western Europe:
Low marriage and late start; relative woman autonomy
HH based on conjugal ties; nuclear
Circulation of “servants” apprenticeship
Primogeniture: young-old contracts
Eastern Europe
Early and universal marriage; little woman autonomy
HH based on blood ties; extended
Labor inputs in family farms
Land partition: collective protection of elderly

12. Line of demarcation in European fertility

13. Influence of family types on industrialization
Modernization theory: it is industrialization that produces nuclear families
How to prove this beyond a doubt?
Hajnal: it is the prevalence of nuclear families that enables industrialization
Probably an exaggeration although lack of constraints on labor force and longer time to save could have been important contributors

14. A second massive transformation: from 1950 to 2000
Relatively early and universal marriage
No marital disruption except for mortality
Most births within marriage
Most child experience within nuclear family
Marriage is late and less common
Marriage is preceded and replaced by unions
High levels of marital disruption
High fraction of births outside marriage
High fraction of child experience in “non-traditional” families

15. Consequences Fertility levels drop
Household types change: increases in lonely households, headed by females
Contracts between generations are transformed
Childcaring and socialization are transformed:
Emotional development
Cognitive development
A source of inequalities

18. Changes in Marriage patterns

19. Marriage timing

20. The increase in cohabitation
Increases in prevalence due to:
Increases in marriages preceded by cohabitation
Increases of cohabitation among divorced

23. The increase in divorce
Crude rate of divorce has had oscillations, lately a tendency to decline. Meaning?
Proportion eventually ending (by year 30) in divorce is now at 50%
Proportion ending in divorce by 5th year has remained stationary since 1985 at 20%. Among first unions there has been an increase in that probability from .30 to .34

24. More on the increase in divorce
Large Black-White differentials
Large differentials by education

29. Unmarried births

32. Transformation of hh

35. Experience of children

37. The second demographic transition

38. What explains this evolution?
Economic explanation:
Incentives to marriage have diminished; costs have increased
Most important is opportunity costs for women
Growth of labor force participation of women
Growth in autonomy
Welfare payments have decreased attractiveness of marriage
Many functions of family have been eroded
Insurance for elderly and children
Education
Economic production
Sources of status and success

39. What explains this evolution?
Sociological explanation:
Secularization and pursuit of individualism
Erosion of dependence on family group for status and emotional support (emergence of social institutions)
Feedback mechanism: as trend proceeds, it transforms people’s motives
Effects of prevalence of divorce on propensity to divorce
Benefits/costs become known
Acceptability of phenomenon Effects of prevalence of divorce on propensity to divorce