This article compares the determinants of living alone among older people during later life in a wide variety of countries from across the globe, including very different family systems, policy ...contexts, levels of development, and socioeconomic characteristics. The analysis makes use of two large datasets, one with country-level variables for 61 countries and the other with microcensus data for 32 countries. Logistic regression is used to estimate the weight of different factors behind the residential choices of the elderly. Basic theoretical expectations about the determinants of living alone are validated. These affect both the supply of potential caregivers (fertility, mortality) and the willingness of individuals to live alone. Overall levels of development play a key role in determining the likelihood of living alone. Another important part of the observed differences is explained by societal characteristics such as family systems and available policy options.
Disparities in reproductive behavior visible in the developed world are a long‐term implication of the demographic transition. While present at the very outset of the transition, their effects are ...most visible once childhood mortality loses its relevance as a key constraint on reproduction. These disparities are rooted in the type of society that emerged as the result of the way the historical role of the family and individual in society interacted with social and economic modernization processes characterizing the entire century, but especially visible during the rapid acceleration of social and cultural changes after mid‐century. The way these new societies function provides a necessary backdrop for understanding fertility in a world of individual reproductive choice and competing goals. The result is that traditionally individualistic societies tend to fare better than societies where family loyalties are and have always been a cornerstone of society. Disparities in fertility are rooted in the incentives and disincentives for reproduction present in society, are unlikely to disappear anytime soon and are leading to very different rates of aging in the developed world.
This study analyzes the timing, magnitude, and volume of the mid-twentieth century baby boom in European and non-European Western countries. The baby boom is found to have been especially strong in ...the non-European countries, fairly strong in some European countries, and quite weak in others. While the boom has often been linked with postwar economic growth and the recuperation of births postponed during the Depression era, we argue that this is only a limited part of the story. In most cases the recovery of the birth rate started well before the end of World War II, a fact not accounted for by existing theories. We investigate the roles played by the recovery of period as well as cohort fertility, the underlying marriage boom, and the recovery of marital fertility. We identify major puzzles for future research, including the reasons for strongly declining ages at marriage and the role played by contraceptive failure in the rise of high-parity births.
Using census and survey microdata from 69 countries worldwide, in this paper we document levels of intergenerational coresidence over the life course and examine changes in recent decades. We present ...evidence of a generalized pattern of increase in intergenerational coresidence during the initial decade of this century. This is most evident among people aged 20–30 and, at least in regions such as Europe and North America and in Latin America and the Caribbean, affects women as much or more than it does men. Rates of increase are fastest in Asia (especially among men), robust in Europe and Latin America, and relatively slow in Africa. This shift is occurring in a variety of demographic, economic, and cultural contexts and appears to run counter to expectations that intergenerational coresidence would gradually decline with modernization and cultural change. We discuss the extent to which these results challenge existing interpretations of the role of the family in contemporary society.
Most people coreside with other kin in private households while others live alone. The incidence of coresidence with kin and solo living varies noticeably across societies. Scholars have long ...theorized about the role of modernization and cultural change for living arrangements, suggesting a trend toward the nuclearization of households (coresidence only with primary kin) or solo living as societies attain higher levels of development. There is little empirical evidence about global variations in living arrangements and about how such variations unfold at different levels of development. Here we address these fundamental questions. Using IPUMS census microdata for 279 samples and 90 countries, we develop a new metric for assessing the part of the lifetime a person can expect to reside with primary kin, nonprimary kin, or alone assuming exposure rates, from birth to death, to the living arrangements observed in a given year. Results show that coresidence patterns differ substantially across societies, with exposure to primary kin alone and to solo living substantially higher at higher levels of development (as measured with Human Development Index HDI). They also reveal a sustained decline in coresidence with nonprimary kin and/or with others nearly everywhere, supporting the idea of an increasing importance of nuclear living arrangements. This trend is most pronounced at medium levels of HDI. At very high levels of development, nuclear family coresidence tends to be stalling or is in decline in favor of more time spent living alone and, rather unexpectedly, to a modest increase in exposure to nonprimary kin within the household. We suggest different interpretations for these results.
The increasing proportion of persons living alone has come to be emblematic in many ways of modern Western societies because it represents the importance conceded to the individual and to individual ...goals at the expense, basically, of the family. Solo living has been interpreted within the context of changing values and preferences, changing personal and conjugal realities, and the changing work contexts so often associated with the Second Demographic Transition. We know little about patterns and trends in living alone over the life course in much of the world because most research to date has concentrated on regional and national portrayals or on living arrangements in later life. This study provides a systematic look at the differences in living alone by age and sex in 113 countries. Our aim is to understand the extent to which behavior differs around the world and the implications this has for society. We also examine the relationship between trends in living alone and levels of human development. Results are taken from three massive dataseis: census and survey microdata from IPUMS-international, Demographic Health Surveys, and EU-Labor Force Surveys.
The key challenge facing contemporary society is a process of population ageing rooted mainly in past fertility cycles. The goals of the study reported in this paper were (i) to analyse jointly the ...post-1930s baby boom and the baby bust that followed, (ii) to consider the specific ways this particular combination influenced the process of ageing in different societies, and (iii) to evaluate some possible implications for policy of different historical experiences. Demographic time series for 27 nations in the developed world were used. The main results confirm the importance of the boom and bust fertility cycle of the second half of the twentieth century for population ageing. Some countries will experience ageing processes driven mainly by the growth of elderly populations while others will age largely as a result of declines in working-age populations. These differences underscore the need to tailor policy priorities for specific patterns of ageing.
In the Western world it is not difficult to identify areas where families and family ties are relatively "Strong" an others where they are relatively "weak." There are regions where traditionally the ...family group has had priority over the individual, and others where the opposite has tended to happen, with the individual and individual values having priority over everything else. The geography of these family systems suggests that the center and northern part of Europe, together with North American society, has been characterized by relatively weak family links, and the Mediterranean region by strong family ties. There are indications that these differences have deep historical roots and may well have characterized the European family for centuries. There is little to suggest that they are diminishing today in any fundamental manner. The way in which the relationship between the family group and its members manifests itself has implications for the way society itself functions. Politicians and public planners would do well to consider the nature of existing family systems when designing certain social policies.
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