| Abstract: | This paper discusses the use of formal models for analyzing kin-group and household organization. The authors begin by presenting a conceptual framework that relates the supply of kin to rules of household formation, demographic constraints, and observed household structure. This framework is used to evaluate an array of techniques and models of kinship and households. Kin relations and household structures can be described using a unifying model designed to identify the dynamic of a system of states out of and into which the units of analysis can move. The behavior of the system is identified through knowledge of transition rates. It is then possible to link such transition rates to coarse indicators of the system, such as proportions occupying a state and distribution of the units by state. Analytic, macro-, and microsimulation models are just alternative ways of linking a state-space and measures of transition rates to final indicators or outcomes. No model can avoid addressing the independence, homogeneity, and time-invariance assumptions, or the 2-sex problem. |
