The evolution of household complexity worldwide: an appreciation on the basis of aggregated census data

Sabine Springer, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Modernization and the demographic transition change household pattern in many countries. Following the theory of nuclearization, these processes will lead to less complex household structures, whatever the societal or cultural context. But complex household structures persist or even increase in some countries. Aggregated census data has been used to study the evolution of the average number of adult persons per household. The results show that there is absence of evolution for this indicator in some Asian regions and increase in complexity for the Middle East, Northern Africa, Central and Western Asia. The combination of four different indicators, based on different age definitions of adulthood, reveals different underlying pattern in household complexity. The analysis results of the evolution of this combined indicators will be used, together with demographic and socio-economic information, for a classification of countries. For some more in-depth analysis using micro census data of the IPUMS database is planned.