Changing household patterns of young couples in low- and middle-income countries

A Tale of Two Villages: Development and Household Change in India

“…However, further analyses of these data by Ruggles (2009Ruggles ( , 2010 suggest that the decline in agricultural employment alongside key demographic factors influencing the availability of kin for co-residence explain roughly 80 percent of countrylevel differences in the prevalence of intergenerational co-residence and stem households. Using a multilevel approach to study the living arrangements of young couples, Spijker and Esteve (2011) similarly found that country-level economic and demographic factors, such as GDP per capita and age at marriage, halved the variance in living arrangements among their sample of low-and middle-income countries. By contrast, using a large sample of low-and middle-income countries from the Demographic and Health Surveys, Pesando and GFC Team (2019) found no significant association between the Human Development Index and the share of women in their reproductive age living in nuclear and three-generation households.…”

“…These socioeconomic processes may either promote or hinder household nucleation, with intergenerational relationships acting as key mediators. Rising employment in large firms—as opposed to small family firms and family farms—and higher incomes are associated with higher levels of household nucleation, chiefly by promoting the financial independence or younger generations (Ruggles 2007; Spijker and Esteve 2011; Yasuda et al. 2011).…”

“…Despite decades of sweeping socioeconomic and cultural transformations, accompanied by sizeable changes in fertility and marriage patterns, extended households remain widespread in many regions of the world (Furstenberg 2019). An “explosion of new data resources” (Ruggles 2012) has allowed social scientists to reject Goode's ([1963] 1970) classical hypothesis that modernization would cause a worldwide convergence to small and nuclear households (Bongaarts 2001; Bongaarts and Zimmer 2002; Demont and Heuveline 2008; Ruggles and Heggeness 2008; Ruggles 2009, 2010, 2012; Spijker and Esteve 2011; Cherlin 2012; Pesando and GFC Team 2019). Although the modernization hypothesis has been partly validated in some regions, mainly Europe and East Asia, studies show a persistent if not growing diversity in international household patterns.…”

Spatiotemporal aggregation for temporally extensive international microdata

“…The availability of the IPUMS family of data access systems, including IPUMS-USA (Ruggles, Genadek, Goeken, Grover, & Sobek, 2015) for microdata provided by the U.S. Census Bureau and IPUMS-International (Minnesota Population Center, 2015a) providing census microdata from 82 countries, has greatly increased the accessibility and utilization of these data. Researchers use IPUMS data to study a wide array of topics, including fertility trends, educational inequality, family formation, labor markets, public health, and others (Bailey & Collins, 2011; Bleakley, 2010; McDaniel, DiPrete, Buchmann, & Shwed, 2011; Spijker & Esteve, 2011). However, in order to protect individual respondents from being reidentified based on their characteristics and where they live, fine scale geographic identifiers are generally not included with microdata records.…”

Social work with middle‐class Spanish families: The challenge of the work–family conflict

“…The logical consequence of this phenomenon is the increasing number of two‐income households (Bonke, ). From the perspective of family social work, this situation produces a twofold effect: one is the redefinition of family relationships within the home (in the division of household responsibilities) (Spijker & Esteve, ); the other is new tensions between family life and working life in both men and women. Many conflicts occurring within the home and on the job have to do with how we manage this new context (Ehlert, ).…”