Co-resident Kin Research Articles

Access to kin, economic stress, and late-life mortality in North Orkney, Scotland, 1851–1911

This paper analyzes the effects of kin availability and short-term economic stress on mortality among older adults in North Orkney, Scotland in the mid-19th through early 20th century. The mortality of those aged 60+ is associated with high oatmeal prices lagged by one year, a delayed effect that may suggest that buffering mechanisms are less effective in the longer term or that relative to younger groups, older adults are better able to cope with the immediate effects of stress. Associations between mortality risk and indicators of kin availability vary by individual sociodemographic characteristics, but they are limited to close kin in both the spatial and genealogical sense. Benefits of nearby, but not coresident kin accrue only to ever-married men during times of high food prices. Coresident and nearby kin are associated with complex patterns of mortality risk, suggesting that family relationships may represent a resource in some circumstances, but a liability in others. There is limited evidence for the effects of expansive kin support for aging adults and support flows do not always favor the older generation.

Post-marital residence patterns and the timing of reproduction: evidence from a matrilineal society.

Humans exhibit a broad range of post-marital residence patterns and there is growing recognition that post-marital residence predicts women's reproductive success; however, the nature of the relationship is probably dependent on whether co-resident kin are cooperators or competitors. Here, we explore this relationship in a Tibetan population, where couples practice a mixture of post-marital residence patterns, co-residing in the same village with the wife's parents, the husband's parents or endogamously with both sets of parents. Using detailed demographic data from 17 villages we find that women who live with only their own parents have an earlier age at first birth (AFB) and age at last birth (ALB) than women who live with only their parents-in-law. Women who co-reside with both sets of parents have the earliest AFB and ALB. However, those with co-resident older siblings postponed reproduction, suggestive of competition-related delay. Shifts to earlier reproductive timing were also observed in relation to the imposition of family planning policies, in line with Fisherian expectations. Our study provides evidence of the costs and benefits to women's direct fitness of co-residing with different kin, against a backdrop of adaptive responses to cultural constraints on completed fertility.

Continuity and Change in U.S. Children's Family Composition, 1968-2017.

We document changes in U.S. children's family household composition from 1968 to 2017 with regard to the number and types of kin that children lived with and the frequency of family members' household entrances and departures. Data are from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 30,412). Children experienced three decades of increasing instability and diversification in household membership, arriving at a state of "stable complexity" in the most recent decade. Stable complexity is distinguished by a decline in the number of coresident parents; a higher number of stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives in children's households; and less turnover in household membership compared with prior decades, including fewer sibling departures. College-educated households with children were consistently the most stable and least diverse. On several dimensions, household composition has become increasingly similar for non-Hispanic Black and White children. Children in Hispanic households are distinct in having larger family sizes and more expected household entrances and departures by coresident kin.

KIN NETWORK DYNAMICS OVER THE LIFE COURSE AND HISTORICAL TIME IN 19TH-CENTURY ORKNEY, SCOTLAND

Kin are important sources of social, instrumental, and financial assistance for older adults. Support from kin is associated with improved wellbeing and longer lives among this age group, yet few longitudinal studies examine information on the composition and structure of kin networks beyond dyadic relationships, such as those between spouses or parents and their children. This study examines the dynamics of non-dyadic measures of kin networks among adults over age 60 using multiple longitudinal linked data sources from North Orkney, Scotland, 1851-1911. Reconstructed individual life courses (N=4,946) and genealogies, in combination in spatial information concerning the proximity non-coresident kin, are used to examine change in kin availability and propinquity over the life course and across historical time. Orkney provides an interesting case study; as information is available on individual-level change in kin availability with a long period of follow up during a time of population change. The study period covers the early stages of population aging and depopulation of the islands, which began in the 1870s in this community. A descriptive analysis of kin network change is presented. Kin availability is associated with longer lives in this sample. The presence of co-resident kin is associated with economic status, after controlling for other factors. Older adults who receive poor relief are significantly more likely to live alone and less likely to live with kin, and the association is stronger for men than for women.

A Novel Adaptation of the HOME Inventory for Elders: The Importance of the Home Environment Across the Life Course.

The context in which dependents, regardless of age, receive care affects their health. This study adapted the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory, originally designed for child development research, to assess the quality of stimulation and support available to elders in their habitual households in Sri Lanka. Whether the adapted domains correlated with indicators of health and well-being in ways consistent with the child development literature was then examined. Through mixed-methods research based on 248 household surveys, four focus groups, and 15 interviews, three domains emerged: Physical Environment, Variety of Stimulation, and Emotional and Verbal Responsiveness. Regression modeling revealed that a higher quality physical home environment correlated with two measures of cognitive function after adjusting for covariates, but no consistent association with two psychological well-being scales. In contrast, higher Variety of Stimulation scores correlated with better cognitive function and lower psychological distress. There was no consistent correlation between Responsiveness and selected health outcomes. Qualitative data indicate that elders are active household contributors who strive to achieve harmonious relations with coresident kin. These findings reveal notable synergies between early and late life efforts to improve cognitive and psychological health, and highlight household considerations for future healthy aging research.

Postmarital residence and child sex selection: Evidence from northeastern Japan, 1716–1870

Background: Child sex is often ‘selected’ due to parental preference, especially in historical East Asia. Postmarital residence shapes coresident kin availability and conjugal power hierarchies, which may influence the couple’s preference and selection on child sex. Empirical evidence, however, remains limited. Objective: We examine whether postmarital residence influences the sex of births and how such influence interacts with coresident kin, sex composition of surviving children, household landholding, and local economic fluctuation. Methods: We analyze annual panel data of 1,045 wives, transcribed from household registers recording the entire population of two villages between 1716 and 1870 in northeastern Japan, where both virilocal and uxorilocal residence were common. We use discrete-time event-history models via binary and multinomial logistic regressions, with either clustered standard errors or random effects at individual level, to examine the effects of selected factors on the probability of having a male, female, or no birth in the next year. Results: Compared with virilocal marriages, uxorilocal marriages are more likely to have a first birth in the next year, especially a female first birth when the household is wealthy. As for second and later births, uxorilocal marriages are less likely to reproduce males in the next year when surviving children are all females, but more likely to reproduce females when surviving children are all males. Conclusions: This study is among the first to provide systemic evidence on how postmarital residence shapes child sex selection. Unlike the common perception of ‘missing girls’ in East Asia, shaped by specific reproductive context, both girls and boys can be missing in early modern Japan.

Kin and birth order effects on male child mortality: three East Asian populations, 1716–1945

Human child survival depends on adult investment, typically from parents. However, in spite of recent research advances on kin influence and birth order effects on human infant and child mortality, studies that directly examine the interaction of kin context and birth order on sibling differences in child mortality are still rare. Our study supplements this literature with new findings from large-scale individual-level panel data for three East Asian historical populations from northeast China (1789–1909), northeast Japan (1716–1870), and north Taiwan (1906–1945), where preference for sons and first-borns is common. We examine and compare male child mortality risks by presence/absence of co-resident parents, grandparents, and other kin, as well as their interaction effects with birth order. We apply discrete-time event-history analysis on over 172,000 observations of 69,125 boys aged 1–9 years old. We find that in all three populations, while the presence of parents is important for child survival, it is more beneficial to first/early-borns than to later-borns. Effects of other co-resident kin are however null or inconsistent between populations. Our findings underscore the importance of birth order in understanding how differential parental investment may produce child survival differentials between siblings.

With the help of kin? Household composition and reproduction in the Netherlands, 1842-1920.

Relatives play an important role in human reproduction according to evolutionary theories of reproductive behavior, but previous empirical studies show large differences in the effects of kin on fertility outcomes. In our paper we examine the effect of co-resident kin and non-kin on the length of birth intervals over the reproductive life course of Dutch women born between 1842 and 1920. We estimate Cox proportional hazard models for parity progression based on the presence of kin and non-kin in the household while controlling for a large number of individual and community-level characteristics. We find that couples living with their brothers experienced shorter birth intervals whereas couples residing with a widowed father had relatively longer birth intervals. The effects of these types of kin on reproduction were most pronounced up to the birth of the fifth child, but not thereafter. We found no effect for mothers or other types of kin.

The effect of male parallel dispersal on the kin composition of groups in white-faced capuchins

Sex-biased dispersal can reduce kin cooperation and kin competition in the dispersed sex. However, this may not be the case when group-living animals engage in parallel dispersal, which occurs when an individual transfers between groups together with other animals or immigrates alone into a group that contains familiar animals. Despite this potential effect on kin cooperation and competition, few studies have thoroughly investigated how parallel dispersal affects the kin composition of groups. To further our understanding of this topic, we investigated the effect of parallel dispersal on access to coresident kin in male white-faced capuchins, Cebus capucinus. Between 2006 and 2013, we collected demographic and genetic data from two to five groups in Sector Santa Rosa, Costa Rica. We genotyped 41 females and 39 males at 14 short tandem repeat loci, and we calculated their estimated relatedness values. The majority of males dispersed in parallel, and parallel dispersing males were more closely related to one another than were other males. Parallel immigrant males and natal females resided with a similar number of same-sex kin. Single immigrant males in multimale groups rarely resided with male kin, and they resided with fewer same-sex kin than did parallel immigrant males and natal females. Because parallel dispersal offers an opportunity for males to form long-lasting cooperative relationships with familiar kin, this dispersal pattern should be taken into account in future models of the evolution of social structure.

Familiarity is more important than phenotypic similarity in shaping social relationships in a facultative female dispersed primate, Colobus vellerosus

Animals often bias affiliative behaviors toward kin, but it is unclear what mechanism most species use to discriminate kin. We investigated if facultative dispersed female primates use phenotype matching and/or familiarity to discriminate female kin. We studied 38 adult female Colobus vellerosus at Boabeng-Fiema, Ghana. We determined dyadic co-residency status and age proximity using long-term demographic data, R-values from 17 short tandem repeat loci, and interaction rates using focal samples collected during one year. Approach rates were not strongly affected by how long females had resided together, which contrasts to the familiarity hypothesis. Females approached and groomed maternal kin more than other females, which supports the mother-mediated familiarity hypothesis. Females did not discriminate paternal half siblings from non-kin, and they did not prefer to interact with females of similar age. Short-term co-resident kin did not bias affiliation toward each other, indicating that female colobus cannot consistently recognize less familiar kin via phenotype matching or that biasing behaviors toward less familiar kin is not beneficial. Despite showing facultative dispersal that may reduce the accuracy of using familiarity as a kin recognition mechanism, female choice of social partners was based on familiarity, which conforms to the pattern observed in many female philopatric primates.

Intergenerational and Sibling Conflict Under Patrilocality

Here we argue that models developed to examine cooperation and conflict in communal breeders, using a "tug-of-war" model of reproductive skew generated by incomplete control, are an appropriate way to model human kinship systems. We apply such models to understand the patterns of effort put into competition between father and son and between brothers in conflict over family resources in a patrilineal kinship system. Co-resident kin do not necessarily emerge with equal shares of the cake in terms of reproductive output. The models show that, depending on the efficiency with which they can gain more control of the resource, on the marriage system, and on the relatedness of the partners in conflict, individuals can do better to help their relatives breed rather than fight each other for the resources needed to reproduce. The models show that when a son's father is still breeding with his mother, sons should not compete for any share of reproduction. However, under polygyny, increased effort is spent on father/son and brother/brother conflict. Fathers will win the majority of reproduction if dominant to sons (in contrast to the finding that daughters-in-law win in conflict over mothers-in-law in patrilocal kinship systems, which has been suggested as explaining the evolution of menopause). Hence who wins in the sharing of reproduction depends not just on which sex disperses but also on the relative competitive ability of all individuals to exploit family resources. Anthropologists have long argued that cultural norms can reduce conflict. These formal evolutionary models help us to quantify the effects of reproductive conflict in families, throwing light on the evolutionary basis not just of patterns of reproductive scheduling, but also human kinship and marriage systems.

Living with Kin in Lowland Horticultural Societies

Postmarital residence patterns in traditional human societies figure prominently in models of hominid social evolution with arguments for patrilocal human bands similar in structure to female-dispersal systems in other African apes. However, considerable flexibility in hunter-gatherer cultures has led to their characterization as primarily multilocal. Horticulturalists are associated with larger, more sedentary social groups with more political inequality and intergroup conflict and may therefore provide additional insights into evolved human social structures. We analyze coresidence patterns of primary kin for 34 New World horticultural societies (6,833 adults living in 243 residential groupings) to show more uxorilocality (women live with more kin) than found for hunter-gatherers. Our findings further point to the uniqueness of human social structures and to considerable variation that is not fully described by traditional postmarital residence typologies. Sex biases in coresident kin can vary according to the scale of analysis (household vs. house cluster vs. village) and change across the life span, with women often living with more kin later in life. Headmen in large villages live with more close kin, primarily siblings, than do nonheadmen. Importantly, human marriage exchange and residence patterns create meta-group social structures, with alliances extending across multiple villages often united in competition against other large alliances at scales unparalleled by other species.

A life-course approach to co-residence in the Netherlands, 1850–1940

ABSTRACTIn this article, we study variations in co-residence with kin in the Netherlands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We use the reconstructed life courses of 17,527 individuals derived from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) database. The life-course approach allows us to look at co-residence from the perspectives of both the receiving households and the co-resident kin. What made households take in relatives and do we find a preference for one type of relative over another? What was the background of people who decided to co-reside in another household? How important were family-related ‘altruistic’ motives compared with economic ones? The outcomes suggest the predominance of altruistic motives for co-residence, apart from persistent inheritance customs in the eastern part of the country.

Post-Familial Families and the Domestic Division of Labour

This paper examines independent living among elderly Brazilians age 65+ of different racial groups using 1980 and 2000 census microsamples. Although there was an overall increase in independent living among Brazilian elders, that increase mainly reflects change among Whites whereas there was little change among Browns or Blacks. Since Whites tend to have higher socioeconomic status than Browns or Blacks in Brazil, one might suppose that a racial disparity merely reflects socioeconomic differences. That is a common argument anyway. But if that were so, then after controlling for socioeconomic factors there should be 1) no racial difference in the likelihood of independent living, and 2) no racial difference hi the change in that likelihood. However, we find 1) net racial differences in independent living in both 1980 and 2000, and 2) a net racial difference in change among unmarried men. Our findings suggest that social, cultural or minority status factors not captured in our statistical models may explain these differences. Additional study is needed to confirm or negate this that will ideally include information about non-coresident as well as coresident kin.

Mortality responses to rice price fluctuations and household factors in a farming village in central Tokugawa Japan

Drawing data from the annual local population registers called shumon-aratame-cho (SAC), this study examines the patterns and covariates of mortality by sex and life stage in the farming village of Nishijo in central Japan in 1773–1869. The discrete-time event history analysis of mortality in the village offers three major findings. First, mortality responses to rice price fluctuations varied greatly by residents' sex and life stage. Second, coresident kin were important for survival throughout the life course, though the magnitude and nature of the mortality effects of coresident kin differed across sex and age groups. Third, household resources and positions that individuals occupied within a household influenced chances of survival especially in adult and elderly years.

Kinship in rural Hungary during the eighteenth century: The findings of a case study

This article examines the kinship system of Hungarian villages in the eighteenth century. Besides describing the basic characteristics of coresident relatives, the study also suggests that investigations of kinship should not be limited to coresident kin because there are important differences in the types and composition of coresident and non-coresident groups. Many relatives, even though they lived in the same community and maintained relations with each other, inhabited different households. Moreover, there were noticeable differences in the structure and composition of kin groups in villages of different ethnic makeup. Although the present evidence is insufficient to detect the operation of corporate kinship groups, it does suggest the need for more detailed kin groupings of all kinds.

A death in the family: Household structure and mortality in rural liaoning: Life-event and time-series analysis, 1792–1867

In China before the twentieth century, the household was a locus of social and economic organization in which resources and responsibilities were allocated. This study shows that the structure of the relationships between coresident kin conditioned the allocation process. Through a discrete-time life-event analysis of triennial household register data from a northeast Chinese village, Daoyi, between 1774 and 1873, we find that an individual's probability of dying, which we treat as an indicator of access to resources and the nature of household roles, was affected by the composition of their coresident kin. As is the case in contemporary societies, widows and widowers had higher mortality than the currently married. Orphans had higher mortality than children with at least one parent present. Reflecting the dependence of a wife's status on whether she had produced an heir for her husband, married women in young adulthood and middle age who had at least one son had substantially lower mortality than those without. Reflecting the strength of the claim that elderly males could make on household resources, children with coresident grandfathers had higher mortality than those without. Even though sons were supposed to be a form of old-age security, however, the death rate of the elderly was not reduced by the presence of sons and grandsons.

Disability in the Family: The Effects on Children's Well-Being

In 1990, 33.7 million people in the United States were limited in their usual activities by a chronic health condition or impairment (Adams & Benson, 1991). Progress in medical technology has increased the number of babies born with disabling conditions who survive to adulthood and has lengthened life for the dependent elderly (Crimmins, Saito, & Ingegneri, 1989; Newachek & Taylor, 1992). The growth of the population with disabilities has increased concerns about who will care for them. The Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1992, ensures basic civil rights for individuals with disabilities and, thus, improves their ability to live independently (Pope & Taylor, 1991). Nevertheless, many disabled persons will remain in the care of their families (Avery, Speare, & Lawton, 1989; Batavia, DeJong, & McKnew, 1991). Many of the same families also provide care for minor children, who are dependent on a caretaker to meet their needs. The additional tasks of caring for a person with disabilities may adversely affect the well-being of the children in those families. The functional limitations imposed by chronic health conditions or physical impairments are variable and not always accompanied by poor health (Batavia, DeJong, & McKnew, 1991; Reis & Brown, 1991). They run the gamut from an inability to perform any task of daily living to the need for only occasional assistance with more complex physical or cognitive tasks. Persons with disabilities ranging from the simplest to the most severe, however, require some form of regular aid. Those living in family households receive all or most of that aid from their coresident kin (Avery, Speare, & Lawton, 1989; Hing & Bloom, 1990). Previous research on disability in the family has focused on the effects of chronically ill and disabled children on the family system and on the health and well-being of siblings (Breslau, Weitzman, & Messenger, 1981; Corman & Kaestner, 1992; Darling, 1987; Drotar et al., 1981; Gath, 1973; Kazak, 1986; Kazak & Merton, 1984; Kazak, Reber, & Snitzer, 1988; Lavigne & Ryan, 1979; Mauldon, 1992; Mulder & Suurmeijer, 1977; Smith & Joesch, 1993; Tew & Laurence, 1973; Trevino, 1979; Yura, 1987). Childhood illness and disability is, perhaps, the most disruptive of family-related health events because it is unusual and falls outside of the normative life course of most families. Restricting the discussion to children, however, understates the potential impact of an individual's health-related disability on other family members. In this study, we examine the effect of disability for any coresident family member on the well-being of children without disabilities who are aged 5 to 17. Using data from the 1988 National Health Interview Survey on Child Health (NHISCH), we document the relationship and number of severely disabled persons in family households and the effect of their presence on three measures of children's physical and emotional well-being. We hypothesize that family relationships and the number of disabled persons who are coresident with the child will have a significant and varying impact on the child's well-being because care giving tasks are allocated differently among family members. The NHIS-CH is a unique data source for this type of analysis because it provides information on not only the health and well-being of the child but also on all related persons in the household. DISABILITY AND THE FAMILY Previous research, as noted, has concentrated on the effects of children's disability or chronic illness on aspects of family life such as family functioning, structure, and the effect on siblings of the disabled child. Substantial realignment of family responsibilities, dyadic relationships, and the care and attention spent on other members of the family occur when a child is born with disabilities or develops them during childhood (Darling, 1987; Seligman, 1991). …

Turn-of-the-Century Dependence and Interdependence: Roles of Teens in Family Economies of the Aged

This study adopts a household economy framework of analysis and links county, household, and individual level 1910 Census data to explore the extra-household activities of teens living in household economies of the aged. Findings are that the household presence of elder household heads or nonnuclear elders (coresident kin of household heads) had significant but different impacts on teens. Older household heads participated less in paid employment and responsibility for economic support generally fell on male teens in the household. Teens were less likely to attend school. In contrast, the presence of nonnuclear elders in households increased the odds of teen members being in school. Nonnuclear elders, as a group, showed need across several dimensions: economic, health, and social support, yet their intrahousehold contributions appear to have allowed teens to pursue schooling.

Yet Another Reanalysis of the Navajo Outfit: New Evidence from Historical Documents

In an effort to find order in the apparent of Navajo kinship organization above the level of the homesite, Aberle (1981) has defined a larger social the coresident kin group, to which he ascribes six characteristics. This paper offers a limited test of Aberle's formulation with historical data on Navajo families near Window Rock, Arizona. The main sources of information are several sets of documents from around 1940 and the recollections of local people themselves. The data concern mainly the sharing of range and other land-based resources, and in general substantiate Aberle's formulation. The paper concludes with the point that the amorphousness of large-scale kin groups may be the result of contradictory aspects of the mercantile and industrial capitalism that have dominated the modern Navajo political economy. These systems have simultaneously encouraged large kin-based and other collectivities and weakened them by fostering economic individualism.