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Friday 14 April 2023 14.00 - 16.00
A-11 FAM10 Living in Uncertain Times: Families and Households
SEB salen (Z)
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Lucia Pozzi
Organizers: - Discussant: Mikolaj Szoltysek
Alessandro Abbate : Population Structures, Households, Life Expectancy, Widowage and Remarriage in Sicily between the 17th and 18th Centuries
The purpose of the paper is to highlight the structural elements of the most widespread family models in Modern Age Sicily, such as numerical extension of households, personal data of its components, type and aggregative interests by examining the structure of the so called `pyramids of the ages' and the ... (Show more)
The purpose of the paper is to highlight the structural elements of the most widespread family models in Modern Age Sicily, such as numerical extension of households, personal data of its components, type and aggregative interests by examining the structure of the so called `pyramids of the ages' and the organization of the household aggregates of several communities between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These factors, read in an overviewed perspective, unequivocally dispel the false myth of an island domestic archetype and Mediterranean in general, a myth characterized by the patriarchal regime, the habit of young married couples to settle in the house of one of their parents and the prohibition of the marriage of widows. On the contrary, the findings from the 1681 and 1747 census - attesting to a wide diffusion of the single marital unit and the neo-local residence – show the groundlessness of the antithetical contrast, made by a certain Anglo-Saxon historiography, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic family model. (Show less)

Dennis Fahlgren : The Family as an Old-age Assurance Strategy, Sweden 1890-1960
Due to declining working capacity at old age, individuals have throughout history assured against loss of income through family networks, life-cycle savings and or the public welfare. As part of my thesis, this paper address this issue by examining old-age assurance strategies in Sweden between 1890-1960. More specifically, I focus ... (Show more)
Due to declining working capacity at old age, individuals have throughout history assured against loss of income through family networks, life-cycle savings and or the public welfare. As part of my thesis, this paper address this issue by examining old-age assurance strategies in Sweden between 1890-1960. More specifically, I focus on the assurance through family networks, market relations (including labour-wage and occupational pensions) and the public sector (including social security and poor relief). The period of study includes major structural and institutional changes expected to have altered individuals assurance strategies, such as the introduction of compulsory public pensions. In theory, the expansion of pensions may have down-played dependency on family network and labour income at higher ages. In this paper, family strategies is put in the forefront, and seen in relation to other forms of support during the period.

The empirical setting is the county of Västerbotten in the northern Sweden, which underwent a rapid industrial development, mainly in forestry, as well as changing migration patterns during the period of study. Due to digitalization of church records (POPLINK-database), it is possible to conduct longitudinal analysis of all individuals living in the area during the period of study. The database contains data on, amongst other aspects, occupation, number of- and proximity to adult children, marital status and if the individual receives support in the poor house or municipal old age home. Apart from descriptive statistics of aspects of family strategies, I will conduct logistic regressions. (Show less)

Siegfried Gruber, Daniel-Armin Djumic : The Influence of Occupations on Household Formation in Urban Southeast Europe
Research about household structures in Southeastern Europe has a long tradition and maps depicting the spread of complex households (often using the term zadruga) have been published as well as descriptions of their distribution. A major missing piece in all this research is that urban populations are generally not touched, ... (Show more)
Research about household structures in Southeastern Europe has a long tradition and maps depicting the spread of complex households (often using the term zadruga) have been published as well as descriptions of their distribution. A major missing piece in all this research is that urban populations are generally not touched, because research has focused on the rural population, which was the majority and has been seen as “the Southeast European population”. One major exception besides Maria Todorova’s analysis of urban households in Bulgaria is the research about Albania using the census of 1918 and it shows that the complexity of the urban households was considerably lower than that of the rural households. Nevertheless, these urban households were generally much more complex than urban households in Western or Central Europe and showed major variations , as e.g. between Tirana and Kruja on the one side and Shkodra on the other side with only half of the share of multiple family households as compared to the previous two cities. Preliminary analyses show that the economic sector’s influence on household formation in urban Albania according to the census of 1918 was of a similar importance than the rural-urban divide, only second to the local factor in variation between the six cities of this census. Additional data from Serbian cities in 1863, Wallachia in 1838, and Istanbul around 1900 will be used in order to get a more nuanced picture of the urban households in this part of Europe. We shall check whether upper class households or people in the white collar sector really were more inclined to form multiple family households than people engaged in production, sales, or service jobs. (Show less)

Dalia Lenarte : Single Individuals in the XIXth Century Lithuanian Peasant Community
In historic Europe, families could not avoid dealing with single unmaried relatives. Much like their peers in Russian villages, the nineteenth-century Lithuanian peasant communities only approved of a married way of life. Single individuals could not participate wholly in the community’s life. Unmarried women and men in nineteenth and early ... (Show more)
In historic Europe, families could not avoid dealing with single unmaried relatives. Much like their peers in Russian villages, the nineteenth-century Lithuanian peasant communities only approved of a married way of life. Single individuals could not participate wholly in the community’s life. Unmarried women and men in nineteenth and early twentieth century Lithuanian villages existed beyond the traditional family and constituted a marginal group. In a majority of Eastern European rural communities, sons and daughters who stayed unwed would remain in the families of their siblings as hired help or would leave for urban areas. In Lithuania, this group of household members unavoidably lost their former social status.

This paper is based on the unique analysis of a large collection of inventory data on 3,000 Lithuanian peasant households. The census was carried out in 1847 and spanned around 483 villages in the Kaunas and Vilnius provinces. The inventories indicated the head of the household, composition of the kin group within the household, age, gender, the livestock and fowl belonging to each household, and the buildings and land owned. The inventory data was collected and analysed by the author as part of the project coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock.
Combined with other types of archival sources inventories are a productive tool for the reconstruction of Lithuania’s peasant households allowing to raise the main inquiry concerning single family members: To what extent single individuals were welcomed and tolerated in the traditional Lithuanian family? (Show less)

Glenn Sandström, Mojgan Padyab & Haruko Noguchi & Rong Fu : Changes in Demographic and Socioeconomic Determinants of Living alone among Women in Sweden and Japan since the 1990s
The increase in one-person household (OPHs) in the developed world is often seen as the result of a trend where family solidarity is replaced by individualistic values and behaviours where the Nordic countries have been identified as forerunners in this development. In Asia, countries such as Japan have reached equal ... (Show more)
The increase in one-person household (OPHs) in the developed world is often seen as the result of a trend where family solidarity is replaced by individualistic values and behaviours where the Nordic countries have been identified as forerunners in this development. In Asia, countries such as Japan have reached equal levels of economic development but retain elements of a strong family system and exhibit a much more asymmetric gender regime.
This study compares the changes in the demographic and socioeconomic composition of OPH women in Sweden and Japan between 1990 and 2016. The probability to be an OPH-household is analysed by means of logistic regression models using microdata covering the entire population in Sweden and the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions in Japan.
In Sweden, the growth of the female OPH-population has halted and shifted to a decline compared to Japan where it has increased rapidly since the 1990s. The analysis finds increasing similarities between the countries in the age patterns and urban-rural differences while persistent contrast in the impact of women’s socioeconomic status and family history remain salient. The findings provide evidence that the transformation of women’s economic role does not result in an ever-increasing shift towards “less” family. Rather, living arrangements depend on the extent to which gender regime adapts to increased economic self-sufficiency among women. These findings highlight the need for preparedness for continued increases of the OPH population among policy makers in economically developed strong family societies such as Japan. (Show less)



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