Systems of Living Arrangements in the United States: 1850–2021

Ginevra Floridi , University of Edinburgh
Albert Esteve, Center for Demographic Studies (Barcelona)

Over the past 170 years the United States (US) has undergone demographic, structural and cultural changes that are reflected in – and a reflection of – changes in living arrangements. We provide the first wholistic account of living arrangements in the US from 1850–2021 using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples. Based on the type of (non-)kin relationship between each individual and their household members, we classify living arrangements broadly into alone, nuclear, and non-nuclear households, with detailed sub-categories (e.g., single-parent household, multigenerational family). Adjusting for changes in mortality, we calculate years of life expectancy spent in each living arrangement, and decompose the contribution of different age groups to period changes in living arrangements. Then, we describe stability and change across cohorts. Our results are consistent with three successive systems of living arrangements. During an “extended” stage (1850–1940), most life-years at population level were spent living with parents and/or children, frequently with other relatives or non-kin. The gradual decline in mixed (family plus non-kin) extended households and the expansion of couple-only households as adult children increasingly withdrew from the parental home gave way to a “nuclear” phase (1940–1980) characterised by the rapid expansion of nuclear families of the dual-parent model, and a decline in extended kin-only households. Since 1980, a new “post-nuclear” era has witnessed the decline in the dual-parent nuclear household as more years are spent as a single parent or in multigenerational kin households. We discuss the structural, cultural, and demographic roots of these changes.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course