Demographic Perspectives on Family Structures and Kinship Dynamics

1. Family Demography Lecture guided by Nan Astone, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

2. Objectives • Like fertility, mortality, family is a very personal thing – • It is also one of the institutions that guarantees the continuation of societies

3. What is a demographic Approach to the family • Here the interest is in how vital rates and population distribution affect kinship structures • And in how kinship structures affect vital rates and population distribution • (Huh? What does Berry mean by that? Well, think about the idea of cultural press and situationally specific factors that influence child bearing.)

4. Perspectives on family • Study family & kinship structure – Co-residence – Timing of marriage, divorce, parenthood – Spacing of children • Health researchers – Use family structure as predictors of health outcomes – E.g. do children from single-parent families have poorer health? – OR use health to predict family structure: – E.g. are healthy people more likely to marry? (does that explain why married people live longer?)

5. What are the outcomes or predictors of such studies? • Polygynous vs. monogamous marriage – (who has more children?) – Are women more or less empowered in one type of marriage or another? • Single-parent vs. two-parent family: child outcomes? • Intergenerational exchange – Co-residence of parents & adult children – Extended vs. nuclear households (what are differences in health and social outcomes?

6. How? • How do the outcomes or predictors in these studies get defined? – Some model of what “families” and “households” are • Almost always implicit • When explicit, generally thought of as a normative scheme • Assumption: – The group being studied has a culturally & historically specific set of kinship rules, which may be formal (written into law) or informal, or a mixture & which can be accurately described by any legitimate or competent group member as a “family”

7. How demographic behavior affects kinship structures • Changes in demographic rates (fertility decline, epidemiologic transition, rural-to-urban migration, immigration) can put kinship systems under intense pressure & bring about social change (think wealth- flows) • For example, Watkins et al took a schedule of mortality, fertility, marriage, divorce & remarriage rates for 1800, 1900, 1960 and 1980. • Calculated various life table quantities – average years lived in different states – e.g. as a daughter – under different fertility, mortality, marriage & divorce rates

8. Proportion w/ at least 1 surviving parent

9. Surviving with both parents alive

10. Thus! • Changed Role of being an “Adult Child”!!!!!! – Obligations (on both sides) go on much longer – Benefits (on both sides) go on much longer – Happened simultaneously with a decline in fertility, on parent side reduced & on child side increased!

11. Adult person-years lived by marital status Watkins, Menken & Bongaarts, ASR 52(3)

12. Changes in marital behavior • # of years married rose from 27 to 42 & THEN declined to 35 – Rising age at marriage & increase in divorce DUE TO declining death rates • Puts enormous strains on married couples – In 1800, a certain # of “bad” marriages ended in death of one partner before they could consider divorce

13. Another example, from Linda Martin • Observed changes in co-residence b/n elderly parents & children in 3 Asian societies – Looked like more elderly living with kids. • Interpreted as change in norm of co-residence – Actually, no change whatever in propensity of widows (male or female) to live with children – Rather, Declining mortality meant elderly were living longer as married couples & being widowed at older ages – So, it looked like change, but it was actually the same, just more folks doing it.

14. Thus, a demographic approach to the family reflects…. • An interest in how vital rates & population distribution affect kinship structures And • An interest in how kinship structure affects vital rates & population distribution

15. How kinship structure affect demographic rates? • Example: Late marriage in Europe caused low natural fertility – (think age at first union and think proportions not marrying as a result of lateness in life) • Example: polygyny lowers fertility – (multiple wives have fewer children per woman than do singlet wives)

16. Impact of 2nddemographic transition • Remember – it refers to a set of changes in sexual behavior, contraceptive behavior, living arrangements, marriage, fertility and employment that results in: – Delays in fertility & marriage – Increases in cohabitation, divorce & non-marital childbearing – Increases in employment of mothers, particularly the employment of mothers of very young children (i.e., under age 3)

17. Reasons? Many have been put forth: – Individualism – Secularism – Feminism – Contraceptive technology – Declining manufacturing – Policies about public provision for the poor

18. Family impact: is 2nddemographic transition bad for kids? • Very large changes in children’s living arrangements – No indication that this is good for children, but also the research on whether it is bad for children has been questioned – Changes are highly associated with low socioeconomic status

19. Another study: Analysis of children’s living arrangements for 17 countries (Europe or w/ large European-origin populations • (see chart next page) • How do children end up in single-mother families? – Predominantly, by means of parental separation rather than being born to a woman whose household does not include a sexual partner – Marital status of mother is NOT IRRELEVANT (except perhaps in Sweden) since non-marital unions are more unstable.

20. Heuveline, PDR

21. Heuveline, continued • How do children who spend some time living apart from both parents spend their time? – Mostly in single-parent families – “Re-partnering” of single mothers varies in prevalence (high in the US for example)

22. McLanahan • • Women with the most resources who opt to have children are largely doing so within stable formal marriages & in so doing, endowing their children with – Older mothers – Two custodial parents – Involved fathers – & More money The latter in part due to maternal employment outside the home Women with the least resources who opt to have children are largely doing so either outside co- residential unions entirely or less stable unions (e.g. unmarried cohabitation) & are endowing their children with – Younger mothers – Lesser probability of residing with fathers – Less involved fathers when the fathers are co-residential – & Less money The latter in part cuz mothers are less likely employed outside the home • •

23. McLanahan • To think about it broadly, demographic transition in the family has led to public policy responses to the stresses placed on social institutions – Old age pensions – a result of epidemiologic transition – Family planning programs – a result of fertility decline – Public housing – a result of urbanization • Policies that increase the returns to work in the low wage sector: – Earned income tax credit – Subsidized child care – Pre-school • Policies that increase private transfers from noncustodial parents (child-support) • Means testing based on individual rather than family resources – (so that co-residence of parents not penalized)

24. Trends in less-developed countries • Rise in the age at marriage – Has occurred everywhere except Latin America where it was high to begin with • Means that duration b/n puberty & marriage increased • Difficult to know what the reasons are for later age @ marriage: • In some countries age is so late as to be of concern – Leading to very low fertility

25. Rising age at marriage & large cohort of adolescents • Implications for public health of the rising age @ marriage & Large cohort of adolescents • Good news – Opportunities for human capital development – “demographic gift” • Very, very low dependency ratio – Delay of first birth • May be good in itself & other things equal will lower fertility

26. Rising age at marriage & large cohort of adolescents • Bad news: – Unmarried post-pubescent people are at high risk for negative reproductive health outcomes • Longer period of exposure (slightly lower age at menarche & rising age at marriage) and huge increase in the size of the population at risk means higher level of problems even in the face of stable or improving behavioral risk factors – Huge cohort for the labor force to absorb • Violence

27. Divorce

28. 144 years of marriage & divorce in the US – from CDC-NCHS data (randyolson.com)

29. Family demography The end….!