Esteve & Liu
Families in Asia: A Cross-National Comparison of Inter-generational Co-residence
Albert Esteve Palos (Centre d’Estudis Demografics)
Chia Liu (Centre d’Estudis Demografics)
A video of the authors presenting this paper available at: http://youtu.be/vB3pKW1AjUw
Dear Dr. García,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. You are certainly right about the need to clarify the different dynamics of intergenerational co-residence, may it be an unmarried individual living with parents, married child (and spouse) living with parents (possibly relying on parental resources), or an elderly parent living with his or her child as a dependent (or possibly still as a provider, which is beyond the scope of this paper).
In terms of David Reher´s perspective on different deeply rooted family values across cultures, I think this certainly applies in many cases in Asia. For example, we observed stability of intergenerational co-residence in China from 1980 to 1990, and India from 1980 to 2010, whereas a decline is observed in some Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia). An East Asian study, “Intergenerational Coresidence in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan: Comparative Analyses Based on the East Asian Social Survey 2006” by T. Yasuda et al suggest that a decline of intergenerational co-residence can be observed across board in the above countries. Therefore, it is perhaps more appropriate to say that we expect to observe a variety of patterns of change for different countries.
Once again, we appreciate your input on this topic.
The paper is very interesting and impressive. As you mentioned, Asia is the most populous continent which has more than 60% of the world population. The changes in Asian family and household are worthy of studying, but it is not common to see this kind of national-comparison research on family and household with those many countries including the most populous countries such as China and India. And the theoretical and methodological work in this paper is really impressive.
I have one comment here which is related to China. China has experienced tremendous socioeconomic and demographic changes since the late 1970s especially after 1990. For example, China’s fertility level declined below replacement level in 1990s based on many empirical evidences. People’s life has been largely altered in the rapid economic development and demographic transition. Therefore, the current family structure and people’s living arrangement in China are necessary to be taken into account in the national comparison study. In some tables in this paper, I found that China’s 1990 census was used to be compared with other countries’ newest census results. Although the trend in family change in China has surfaced in 1980s, it is better to see the recent comparison among all countries. Because I myself am studying family change in contemporary China as well, I understand that the data utilized in this paper is mostly from IPUMS international which provides census data of many countries in the world but only China’s 1982 and 1990 censuses are available. If you can get access to China’s most recent census data in the near future, there must be some new interesting changes can be used in your national comparison study.
This paper brought up many interesting questions and many findings are worthy of further detailed studying. For example, you mentioned “living alone” population in Asia. There is an observable increase in the proportions of living alone population in many countries in Asia. However, some interesting questions are yet to be answered. For instance, the changes in the age distribution the “living alone” population and the reasons why people choose to live separately with their relatives might be different between countries.
Dear Fei,
Thank you for bringing up the important issue of comparability, as comparing China 1980, 1990 to say, Indonesia 2000 and 2010 would be comparing apples to oranges. Due to data constraint, we were only able to look at change in China between the those two decades. We look forward to further explore this topic upon the release of more recent year IPUMS Chinese censuses. The T. Yasuda paper, using East Asian Social Survey, does show that intergnerational co-residence has been on a decline for China in the recent years. The comparatively low rate of individuals living alone (although on the rise in several developed country) is also a topic of interest for me, and I hope to have the opportunity to develop on this topic in the future. Once again, we appreciate your valuable comments.
Dear Albert and Chia,
It’s a great research paper. Two comments here:
1. It will be better that the words “Intergenerational Co-residence” in the title be changed into “Living Arrangement”. Because the contexts about “living alone” and “living with a spouse” are not within the scope of “intergenerational co-residence”.
2. The percentage of single household has increased rapidly from 8.3% in 2000 census to 14.5% in 2010 census in China. That’s a very interesting issue worthy of detail studying. CFPS(Chinese Family Panel Study) data may help you a lot in your futher research.
Dear Zhengwei,
Regarding your first comment, it is true that we explored living arrangements beyond intergenerational co-residence. Intergenerational co-residence is only one of the most distinct characteristics of Asia families.
China is a very interesting case, as its rapid recent developments lead to equally rapid social changes. Although we are aware of the availability of more recent year data on China, we are constrained by the need to ensure that data are comparable cross-nationally between the Asia countries, hence we chose to use IPUMS International, a set of harmonized census microdata, to produce our results. Since it is a broad study intending to cover many countries and many decades using comparable micro data, we were forced to abandon some great data sources, to maintain comparability. Thank you for pointing us toward the right direction for future research ideas.
I tend to agree with the discussant that caution is in order regarding changes in family patterns after the demographic transition. I find that one interesting comparison in that respect is between rural and urban areas. The latter ones are often assumed to be more Westernized and further along in the revolution of family patterns in living arrangements. In our study of Cambodia (Demont and Heuveline 2008), we actually found more co-residence in urban areas than in rural areas where nuclear families dominate.
Demont, Floriane and Patrick Heuveline. 2008. “Diversity and Change in Cambodian Households (1998-2006),” Journal of Population Research 25(3): 287-313.
Dear Professor Heuveline,
Thank you so much for your comment. I apologize for not having seen this comment earlier. Your findings seem to agree with our assertion here:
The constraint imposed by housing prices and the shift from parental needs to mutual needs encouraged continual intergenerational co-residence in contrast to the predictions of the modernization theory, as high levels of intergenerational co-residence can be found in urban settings due to housing constraints and the high costs of living (Chaudhuri and Roy, 2009; Logan et al., 1998; DaVanzo and Chan, 1994; Martin, 1989).
I found these observations to be surprising, as you have stated, one may expect westernization to be far more prevalent in urban areas than rural areas. The reality shows that despite our expectations from modernization theory and convergence theory, economic constraints drive individuals to elect more practical living provisions.
Thank you for offering your valuable work for our reference on this topic.
Chia