Modelling the Dynamics of Living Arrangements

Abstract

A particular living arrangement can be operationalized in several quite distinct ways. We discuss three options here. Living arrangements will be defined as either marital status, family type, or household type. The choice to be made between these three forms of arrangements in the context of a particular case study depends on various theoretical and practical factors, including data availability and model complexity. The key question, however, is to what extent the option chosen is a good predictor of the relevant behaviour of the individuals under consideration. For instance, in some countries, the number of divorced females aged 20–50, say, will be a key variable to assess the amount of welfare to be spent to support single mothers. Hence, in this example marital status would be an appropriate choice for living arrangement. But in some other countries, including Sweden and the Netherlands, marital status is a much less accurate description of living arrangement. Therefore, in the case study for the Netherlands reported by Van Imhoff in Chapter 6, household status was included in the living arrangement dimension, using the one-parent family and consensual union as two possible household types.KeywordsMarital StatusLiving ArrangementHousehold TypeConsensual UnionHeadship RateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.