Abstract
Based on census data from China, this paper uses SOCSIM microscopic simulation method to decompose the key factors of family transition into demographic and residence pattern factors. The former are further broken down into demographic inertia, fertility, mortality and marriage rate. The results indicate that the current demographic changes are relatively small and, thus, the small fluctuations caused by demographic changes contribute much less than residence pattern to the family transition. Among the demographic factors, demographic inertia and fertility have a greater effect on family transition and the impacts caused by fertility and marriage rate are consistent with the direction of the overall influence of demographic factors: increasing the proportion of single-person households, one-generation households, and two-generation households, and decreasing the proportion of three-generation or more households. In contrast, the effect of mortality rate was opposite to that of fertility rate, which increased the proportion of populations living in single-person, one-generation, and two-generation households, but the decreased the proportion of the population living in three-generation or more households.
Highlights
Size and family structure reflect the status of a family from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives
We use Deffect to imply the effect of demographic factors (D refers to the total population) and Peffect to imply the effect of residence patterns (P refers to the proportion of population groups with different residence patterns to the total population)
From 2000 to 2010, the proportion of the population living in single-person households increased by 2.55%, of which 2.48% was caused by change in residence patterns; demographic factors only made a minor contribution to the change in proportion
Summary
Size and family structure reflect the status of a family from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. As social and economic development move forward in China, the structure of Chinese families has undergone continuous changes. Chen movement and socio-economic development were behind significant changes to the types and the intergenerational structure of Chinese households. Demographic factors have major impacts on family size and structure (Jiang and O’Neill 2007). Demographic factors such as fertility and mortality have a significant impact on family structure and kinship (Hammel 2005). This paper first divides the factors influencing the transition in family structure into two types (demographic factors and residence patterns), and further breaks down the demographic factors into demographic inertia, fertility rate, mortality rate and marriage rate in an effort to explore their specific impacts. The paper applies the SOCSIM microscopic simulation method to data from the first to the sixth national census in China to analyze family structures in the past decades, and studies how and to what extent different factors have contributed to the transition of family structures
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