U.S. Family Household Momentum and Dynamics: An Extension and Application of the ProFamy Method

The classic headship-rate method for demographic projections of households is not linked to demographic rates, projects a few household types without size, and does not deal with household members other than heads. By comparison, the ProFamy method uses demographic rates as input and projects more detailed household types, sizes, and living arrangements for all members of the population. Tests of projections from 1990 to 2000 using ProFamy and based on observed U.S. demographic rates before 1991 show that discrepancies between our projections and census observations in 2000 are reasonably small, validating the new method. Using data from national surveys and vital statistics, census microfiles, and the ProFamy method, we prepare projections of U.S. households from 2000 to 2050. Medium projections as well as projections based on smaller and larger family scenarios with corresponding combinations of assumptions of marriage/union formation and dissolution, fertility, mortality, and international migration are performed to analyze future trends of U.S. households and their possible higher and lower bounds, as well as enormous racial differentials. To our knowledge, the household projections reported in this article are the first to have found empirical evidence of family household momentum and to have provided informative low and high bounds of various indices of projected future households and living arrangements distributions based on possible changes in demographic parameters.     

Household and Living Arrangement Projections at the Subnational Level: An Extended Cohort-Component Approach

This article presents the core methodological ideas and empirical assessments of an extended cohort-component approach (known as the “ProFamy model”), and applications to simultaneously project household composition, living arrangements, and population sizes–gender structures at the subnational level in the United States. Comparisons of projections from 1990 to 2000 using this approach with census counts in 2000 for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC show that 68.0 %, 17.0 %, 11.2 %, and 3.8 % of the absolute percentage errors are <3.0 %, 3.0 % to 4.99 %, 5.0 % to 9.99 %, and ≥10.0 %, respectively. Another analysis compares average forecast errors between the extended cohort-component approach and the still widely used classic headship-rate method, by projecting number-of-bedrooms–specific housing demands from 1990 to 2000 and then comparing those projections with census counts in 2000 for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC. The results demonstrate that, compared with the extended cohort-component approach, the headship-rate method produces substantially more serious forecast errors because it cannot project households by size while the extended cohort-component approach projects detailed household sizes. We also present illustrative household and living arrangement projections for the five decades from 2000 to 2050, with medium-, small-, and large-family scenarios for each of the 50 states; Washington, DC; six counties of southern California; and the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. Among many interesting numerical outcomes of household and living arrangement projections with medium, low, and high bounds, the aging of American households over the next few decades across all states/areas is particularly striking. Finally, the limitations of the present study and potential future lines of research are discussed.     

Lessons from stochastic small-area population projections: the case of Waikato subregions in New Zealand

Subnational population projections in New Zealand by means of the conventional deterministic cohort-component method have had a tendency to be conservative: underprojecting fast-growing populations and overprojecting slow-growing ones. In this paper we use a stochastic population projection method as an alternative. We generate population projections for five demographically distinct administrative areas within the Waikato region of New Zealand: Hamilton City, Franklin District, Thames-Coromandel District, Otorohanga District and South Waikato District. The results are compared to official subnational deterministic projections. The accuracy of subnational population projections in New Zealand is strongly affected by the instability of migration as a component of population change. Differently from the standard cohort-component method, in which net migration levels are projected, the key parameters of our method are age-gender-area specific probabilistic net migration rates. Generally, the identified and modelled uncertainty makes the traditional ‘mid-range’ scenario of subnational deterministic projections of limited use for policy analysis or planning beyond a relatively short projection horizon. We find that the projected range of rates of population growth is wider for smaller regions and/or regions more strongly affected by net migration. Directions for further development of the methodology are suggested.     

Using census data for household projections: an overview of results from the HOMES Project

"This article provides an overview of the household projection model HOMES [a computer model developed to forecast the number and characteristics of households] and presents new household projections for six countries--China, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. The household projections are based on recently released population projections from The World Bank and on rules governing living arrangements quantified with the latest available census or demographic survey for each country. Growth in the number of households to the year 2030 is projected along with changes in household membership and the dependency burden."     

Can we study the family environment through census data? A comparison of households,dwellings, and domestic units in rural Mali

Are ‘statistical households’, as defined in national censuses, able to describe the family environment in Africa? Do they correspond to the family units that individuals identify with? To address this issue, we build on a follow-up survey in south-east Mali, which links national censuses with local censuses at the individual level (N?≈?28,000 census observations). Three cross-sectional snapshots of family arrangements are compared: households recorded in national censuses, and family economic units and residential units recorded by local censuses. The national census household data appear poorly suited to documenting family living arrangements. They do not account for family economic units or residential units, but are highly conditioned by a normative representation centred on the nuclear family. Therefore, they fail to describe the complexity and diversity of people’s living spaces, making particular types of living arrangements invisible and increasing the likelihood of omitting individuals who do not fit into a nuclear model.     

The effects of high HIV prevalence on orphanhood and living arrangements of children in Malawi, Tanzania, and South Africa

Using longitudinal data from three demographic surveillance systems (DSS) and a retrospective cohort study, we estimate levels and trends in the prevalence and incidence of orphanhood in South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi in the period 1988-2004. The prevalence of maternal, paternal, and double orphans rose in all three populations. In South Africa - where the HIV epidemic started later, has been very severe, and has not yet stabilized - the incidence of orphanhood among children is double that of the other populations. The living arrangements of children vary considerably between the populations, particularly in relation to fathers. Patterns of marriage, migration, and adult mortality influence the living and care arrangements of orphans and non-orphans. DSS data provide new insights into the impact of adult mortality on children, challenging several widely held assumptions. For example, we find no evidence that the prevalence of child-headed households is significant or has increased in the three study areas.     

The Elderly and the Extended Household in Portugal: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis

Portugal, a southern European country, is expected to exhibit a relatively large proportion of extended households. However, following some general trends associated with large social transformations, Portugal is also expected to have an increasingly larger proportion of nuclear families. We use data from the eight waves of ECHP (European Community Household Panel), covering the years from 1994 to 2001, to establish whether these expectations are justified. Among the nuclear households that include elderly members, we isolate those corresponding to single-person households, since they are particularly relevant for policy purposes. Separate analyses are carried out for the elderly with health problems and for those with no health problems, in order to detect different patterns of living arrangements. We also project the living arrangements until 2005, based on an age-period-cohort analysis. We find that the extended households are a very significant form of living arrangement with reference to the Portuguese elderly, and a living arrangement whose importance is not declining over time. In particular, the oldest old constitutes the group that tends to be found living most frequently in extended households, while those with health problems start much earlier than those with no health problems to live in extended households as they grow older. The proportion of individuals aged 65+ living alone has somewhat decreased, but the proportion of this type of household largely increases with age.

Household diversity and dynamics of recent immigrants in Australia

The family and friends that immigrants live with are important sources of assistance and support, especially in the period immediately following migration. The paper uses data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to examine the living arrangements of recent immigrants, the transitions in household structure they experience during the first few years of settlement and whether the changes in living arrangements are related to other changes that immigrants experience during the early settlement period such as changes in marital and employment status. Multivariate logistic regression models are used to examine the relation between immigrants’ characteristics and their experience of changes in living arrangements. Many live in extended family households soon after arrival, but set up their own households when they are more settled. Changes in immigrants’ household structure and living arrangements during the first few years of settlement are usually related to age, visa category of migration and change in marital status.     

Living Arrangements and the Elderly: An Analysis of Old-Age Mortality by Household Structure in Casalguidi, 1819–1859

The elevated levels of protection, assistance, and care enjoyed by the elderly living in complex households has long been a key assumption of many family system theories. However, although this hypothesis has been demonstrated for contemporary contexts, quantitative evidence for past populations is particularly scarce, if not nonexistent. This article investigates the relationship between old-age mortality and living arrangements in a mid–nineteenth century Tuscan population, where the joint family system of sharecroppers coexisted alongside the nuclear system of day laborers. Our findings demonstrate that within complex households, the complexity of relationships, gender inequalities, and possible competition for care and resources among the most vulnerable household members—namely, the elderly and the young—weakens the assumption that the elderly benefitted from lower rates of old-age mortality.     

分化与特色:中国老年人的居住安排——对692位老人的调查

文章通过对692位老人调查数据的分析发现:(1)中国城乡老年人的居住安排呈现多样化特征,有67.8%的老年人独立居住;(2)大多数老年人居住的社区针对老年人的服务和设施相当欠缺,尤其是针对残疾老人的设施更是奇缺;(3)老年人在使用社区设施上群体性差异较小;(4)老年人居住上获得包括单位在内的机构的帮助已经很少;(5)住房条件和财产权利构成了中国老年人社会分层的基本尺度。具有与西方发达国家老年人住房安排和选择不一样的特征,这些特征蕴含着中国特色。     

中国老年人的居住安排与变化:2000～2006

基于中国老龄科学研究中心2000年、2006年两次全国性的调查数据,对我国老年人居住安排的特征与变化趋势进行分析。结果表明,虽然三代同住目前仍是我国老年人最主要的居住安排形式,但该比例正在下降,同时只与配偶同住的比例上升。考察不同特征老年人的居住安排特点以及老年人的居住意愿,以期为家庭养老、社区照料服务等方面的研究以及相关政策的制定提供支持。     

The Study on the Satisfaction of the Elderly People Living with Their Children

In today’s society, with the aging population, the satisfaction of the elderly people is highly connected with the social sustainability. This article used the data of the Chinese Health and the Pension Follow-up Survey from CHARLS in 2013 to analyze the relation between the elderly people’s satisfaction and their living arrangement. Based on the control of the influential factors on the individual, family and the regional level, this article used ordinary least square regression method to find out that the elderly people’s satisfaction will be deceased because of living with their children. However, the elderly people’s dissatisfaction will be vanished along with the growth of the age of the elderly. Therefore, the elderly people’s living arrangements have been changed, to maintain the satisfaction of the elderly in China, the appropriate health care and other activities should be redesigned and developed for the elderly who live by themselves.     

Women’s experiences of antenatal transfer for threatened premature labour in NSW: A qualitative study

BackgroundEach year thousands of pregnant women experiencing threatened premature labour are transferred considerable distances across Australia to access higher level facilities but only a small proportion of these women go on to actually give birth to a premature baby. Women from regional areas are required to move away from their home, children and support networks because of a perceived risk of birthing in a centre without neonatal intensive care facilities.AimThis study examines the experience of women undergoing antenatal transfer for threatened premature labour in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory who do not give birth during their transfer admission.MethodsThirteen semi-structured in-depth interviews were held with women across five tertiary referral sites across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, and analysed until saturation for themes.FindingsSeven urban and six rural women were interviewed. Women and their families were all negatively affected by antenatal transfer. Factors that helped enable a positive experience were; enhanced sense of safety in the tertiary unit, and individual qualities of staff. Factors that contributed to negative experiences were; inadequate and conflicting information, and no involvement or choice in the clinical decision-making process to move to another facility.ConclusionsAntenatal transfer is an extremely stressful experience for women and their families. The provision of high quality written and verbal information, and the inclusion of women's perception of risk in the clinical decision making process will improve the experience for women and their families in NSW and the ACT.     

An evaluation of population projections by age

A number of studies have evaluated the accuracy of projections of the size of the total population, but few have considered the accuracy of projections by age group. For many purposes, however, the relevant variable is the population of a particular age group, rather than the population as a whole. We investigated the precision and bias of a variety of age-group projections at the national and state levels in the United States and for counties in Florida. We also compared the accuracy of state and county projections that were derived from full-blown applications of the cohort-component method with the accuracy of projections that were derived from a simpler, less data-intensive version of the method. We found that age-group error patterns are different for national projections than for subnational projections; that errors are substantially larger for some age groups than for others; that differences in errors among age groups decline as the projection horizon becomes longer; and that differences in methodological complexity have no consistent impact on the precision and bias of age-group projections.     

Household Budgets as a Social Indicator of Poverty and Inequality in South Africa

In the absence of a universally accepted method of calculating poverty, household expenditure can be used to provide an indication of inequality of wealth and serve as an indicator of poverty. Household expenditure comprises expenditure of private households on goods and services, irrespective of their durability. The portion of household budgets allocated to different types of goods and services provides an indication of the material standard of living of a population. The article discusses different definitions of poverty and compares the state of poverty according to these definitions in selected countries. This is followed by an analysis of South Africa’s economic position in the world and a comparison of the household budgets and demographic profile of South African households that fall into different income groups in order to identify the differences between the poorest and the wealthiest households in South Africa. Income inequality in South Africa is further elucidated by means of the Gini coefficient. A comparison is also made between the household budgets of the poorest households with the minimum financial living level requirements in South Africa to maintain their health and have acceptable standards of hygiene and sufficient clothing for their needs.     

The heterogeneous impact of pension income on elderly living arrangements: evidence from China’s new rural pension scheme

This paper investigates the impact of pension income on living arrangements of the elderly. Taking advantage of a unique opportunity due to the recent establishment and expansion of the New Rural Pension Scheme in China, we explicitly address the endogeneity of pension status and pension income through a fixed-effect model with instrumental variable approach by exploiting exogenous time variation in the program implementation at county level. We find an overall positive effect of pension income on independent living as well as considerable heterogeneity. The positive income effects of the NRPS are concentrated among the elderly with adult children living nearby, of higher socio-economic status, and with better health at baseline; for other groups, the effects are insignificant. We also find that more generous programs exhibit larger effects. Our results highlight that living arrangement is multidimensional in rural China.     

A Proactive Approach to Aging Well for Women Over 45

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on an exploratory two-group, pre- and posttest design study, which employed data triangulation with a convenience sample (n = 120) of women over 45 years aged between 45 and 83 years, living and/or working within the South East Sydney and Illawarra areas of New South Wales. Sixty-nine women recorded the Health Check Log (HCL) (33 were health professionals) to assess and monitor their health over 12 months. The majority found the HCL greatly assisted in monitoring and maintaining their health, and the analyses of the SF-36 health survey suggest that women 45 years and over may benefit by regular use of the HCL.     

Inequality in Human Development across the Globe

The Human Development Index is the world's most famous indicator of the level of development of societies. A disadvantage of this index is however that only national values are available, whereas within many countries huge subnational variation in development exists. We therefore have developed the Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI), which shows within-country variation in human development across the globe. Covering more than 1,600 regions within 161 countries, the SHDI and its underlying dimension indices provide a 10 times higher resolution picture of human development than previously available. The newly observed within-country variation is particularly strong in low- and middle-developed countries. Education disparities explain most SHDI inequality within low-developed countries, and standard of living differences are most important within the more highly developed ones. Strong convergence forces operating both across and within countries have compensated the inequality enhancing force of population growth. These changes will shape the twenty-first century agenda of scientists and policy-makers concerned with global distributive justice.     

A demographic examination of grandparent caregivers in the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey

As part of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, the Census Bureau is required to determine how many grandparents are serving as caregivers to a grandchild. Using data from the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, this paper presents demographic information on two types of grandparent households, and outlines the challenges associated with use of the new questions about grandparent care developed by the Census Bureau. We compare skipped-generation households, in which a grandparent and grandchild coreside but no parent is present, to three-generation shared-care households in which the grandparent claims primary responsibility for the grandchild. We focus on two geographic regions of the United States, New England and the Deep South, providing the first report on the prevalence and characteristics of these households, and the extent to which these attributes are geographically variable. We estimate that the population of three-generation shared-care families is at least as large as the population ofskipped-generation grandparent care families.We identify a number of differences between skipped-generation and shared-care households, especially with respect to the age of the grandchildren involved and the levels of economic hardship. Significant regional differences are also observed, with grandparent care households of both types being more common in the Deep South than in New England. We conclude that data using these new questions have the potential to greatly enrich our demographic understanding of grandparent households by shedding new light on a type of grandparent care often hidden from analysis: grandparents who are responsible for grandchildren in three-generation households.     

Socioeconomic Differences According to Family Arrangements in Chile

Family changes have accelerated in Chile in the last decades. Impressively, the proportion of children born outside of marriage has reached over 60%, at the same time that marriage has declined and cohabitation has increased. These changes are regularly considered indicators of a second demographic transition. This study describes the socioeconomic differences that currently exist in Chile between first-time mothers living in different family arrangements, and it asks to what extent these differences are the result of long term disadvantages passed on from the families the respondents grew up in. The data comes from a postpartum survey implemented in Santiago (N = 686 women). The results show large differences in the socioeconomic wellbeing of women in different family arrangements. Women in nuclear marriages stand far apart from any other group in terms of educational attainment, income and participation in the labor force. Cohabiters and married women in extended households enjoy a level of socioeconomic wellbeing that is similar, but not as high as that of married women in nuclear households. Cohabiters in extended households, visiting, and single mothers look alike, and are the most vulnerable women in the sample. The link between the current scenario and the family where the respondents grew up is strong. Under these circumstances, it is hard to interpret the recent demographic changes in Chilean families as a prototypical case of the SDT. The trend the country is following resembles closer the dichotomous trajectory the U.S. has followed.