Evolution of the family

A disappearing entity?

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

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

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)

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

Are families disappearing?

What implications for human species? Has the new family an

evolutionary advantage?

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

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

The effects of HIV/AIDS

• Orphanhood

• Widowhood

• Skip-generation households: grandparents and grandchildren with no adult generations

• Older female headed households

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

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

Line of demarcation in European fertility

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

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

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

Changes in Marriage patterns

Marriage timing

The increase in cohabitation

• Increases in prevalence due to:– Increases in marriages preceded by

cohabitation– Increases of cohabitation among divorced

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

More on the increase in divorce

• Large Black-White differentials

• Large differentials by education

Unmarried births

Transformation of hh

Experience of children

The second demographic transition

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

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