Leisure: Definitions,Trends, and Policy Implications

Economic theories predict that with modernity and with the increase in standards of living, individuals will aspire for more leisure. However, the results of empirical studies which examined period trends in leisure time across developed countries do not confirm this presumption. The current study asks: If changes in leisure stem from ideational changes among different generations, will trends in leisure look different if examined across cohorts, or if measured differently? By integrating theoretical definitions of leisure based on literatures in economics, sociology, and psychology, this research derives three main macro-level empirical measures of leisure from various sources. These measures are used to analyze the contribution of population turnover to changes in the quantity of leisure, in developed countries, using linear regression decomposition method. Our results show an almost unequivocal increase in leisure across cohorts, across 159 country-periods, suggesting that new policies supporting domestic consumption are warranted.

     

Impacts of Demographic Trends on US Household Size and Structure

We use a household projection model to construct future scenarios for the United States designed to reflect a wide but plausible range of outcomes, including a new set of scenarios for union formation and dissolution rates based on past trends, experience in other countries, and current theory. The period covered is from 2000 to 2100. We find that the percentage of people living in households headed by the elderly may climb from 11 percent in 2000 to 20–31 percent in 2050 and 20–39 percent in 2100, while the average size of households could plausibly be as low as 2.0 or as high as 3.1 by the second half of the century. We assess the sensitivity of household size and structure to various demographic events, and show that outcomes are most sensitive to changes in fertility rates and rates of union formation and dissolution. They are less sensitive to the timing of marriage and childbearing and to changes in life expectancy.     

A multi-dimensional model for projecting family households--with an illustrative numerical application

"This paper develops a multi-dimensional model for projecting households and population. The model is constructed to ensure consistency between the demographic events occurring to males and females as well as to parents and children. The model permits projection of characteristics of households, their members, and population structure, using data that are usually available from conventional sources. Unlike the traditional headship-rate method, our model can closely link the projected households with demographic rates. The model includes both nuclear and three-generation households, so that it can be used for countries where nuclear households are dominant and for countries where nuclear and three-generation households are both important. The illustrative application to China, although brief, provides some policy-relevant information about future trends of Chinese household size, structure, and the age and sex distribution of the population, with a focus on the elderly."     

Can Regional Variations in Demographic Structure Explain Regional Differences in Car Use? A Case Study in Austria

Due to its manifold impact on the environment private car use represents an important dimension of environmental behavior in industrialized countries. Obviously, private car use is related to demographic characteristics of households such as the life-cycle stage and the living arrangement the household lives in. In addition systematic regional differences of private car use have to be taken into account. In this paper a causal model is derived, which aims to explain regional differences in car ownership and car use by regional demographic differences and region-specific control factors such as the car technology and institutional factors. Using aggregate data from a household survey in Austria and data from Austrian official statistics causal effect coefficients are then estimated. By applying path analysis the estimated effects of regional demographic characteristics on region-specific car ownership and car use can be decomposed into direct and indirect effects, with the latter effects being mediated by the control factors. Except for the average age of household heads and population density no significant direct demographic effects on regional patterns of car ownership and car use can be found. Car ownership and car use are best predicted by using the considered control factors as predictor variables. Nevertheless, many of the presumed indirect effects turn out to be of importance since demographic factors are closely linked to measures of regional institutional settings like per capita income, ownership of house/apartment and net commuting index.     

Farm Household Lifecycles and Land Use in the Ecuadorian Amazon

This paper describes trends in population, household formation, fragmentation of landholdings, and changes in land use between 1990 and 1999 in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon (NEA)—one of the areas of highest biodiversity in the world. It also shows how changes in land use are associated with the duration (or age) of the farm settlement, which is also linked to the stage in the farm household lifecycle and household composition. The study is based upon data from two detailed household surveys, which result in a cohort of 246 farm households interviewed in 1990 and 1999 as well as 383 new farm households constituted after 1990. Distinct patterns of land use are linked with duration of settlement, independent of when settlement occurred in the region.     

Household structure and housing needs

This paper is mainly derived from the material presented in the preceding article by S. P. Brown. Indeed, while the previous analysis is of considerable intrinsic interest, the hypothetical population was constructed and its family distribution was shown for the purpose of providing a basis for estimates of housing needs. For several reasons it appeared to be essential to have such a basis. First, any housing programme has to take the future, as well as the present, distribution of households by type and size into account. Secondly, such a programme has to be designed so as not to prevent household formation—there should be dwellings for all potential households, so that involuntary doubling-up need not occur. Thirdly, most residential areas should have dwellings for an eventually stable population, that is, for one which has variety of age groups and of household types, and also fair stability of housing demand. Estimates of the distribution of potential ‘households’ could be derived from the ‘family’ distribution of the hypothetical population which reflects current demographic trends. Thus although this population is a ‘hypothetical’ one, it provides a realistic premise for considering housing needs, and because it is a ‘stationary’ one, it provides an especially suitable premise. Moreover, since the demographic characteristics of its ‘families’ and therefore of its potential households were established in far greater detail than has ever been the case in sample surveys of existing households, it was possible to classify households in the terms which appear to be most appropriate for the first draft of a housing programme, irrespective of social and economic variations in demand.

The first stage in following up Mr Brown's analysis was the conversion of ‘families’ into ‘households’. Two examples of the possible household distribution of the hypothetical population are presented. Example A, which gives a realistic, but not extreme, picture of the conversion of families into households, is used for the subsequent detailed analysis, while broader figures for distribution B are also included.

In the second stage the various types of household had to be distinguished. For estimating housing needs, two interrelated criteria of household classification are relevant—first, the stage in the life of a household, especially appropriate in considering space requirements; secondly, the age composition of households, which largely determines the type of dwelling needed.

The detailed distribution of households by size and type, based on this classification, is further translated into a distribution of dwellings by type and size. For this purpose, additional assumptions about the number of rooms and the type of dwelling needed by households of various types are introduced and applied to the hypothetical population, both to household distributions A and B. These assumptions are not based on accepted standards, nor do they suggest standards. They are merely used for the purpose of illustrating a possible method of estimating housing needs on the basis of a detailed picture of household structure. They are further designed to represent one possible compromise between economy in dwelling distribution, on the one hand, and flexibility of space for individual households, on the other.

In the final sections of the paper, the implications of the dwelling distributions here presented are discussed in relation to household mobility, and also with reference to the necessity for reconciling short-term and long-term housing needs in any housing programme.     

A Cross-National Analysis of Lifespan Inequality, 1950–2015: Examining the Distribution of Mortality Within Countries

Cross-national health research devotes considerable attention to lifespan and survival rate disparities that are found between countries. However, the distribution of mortality across the world is shaped mostly by what happens within countries. We address this striking gap in the literature by modeling length-of-life inequality for individual nation-states. We use life tables from the United Nation’s (2015) World Population Prospects to estimate inequality levels for 200 countries across 13 waves between 1950 and 2015. We find that lifespan inequality is steadily declining across the world, but that each country’s level of inequality, and the rate at which it declines, vary considerably. Our models account for more than 90% of the longitudinal and cross-sectional variation in country-level lifespan inequality during the 1990–2015 period. Maternal mortality is the strongest predictor in our model, while disease prevalence, access to safe water, and health interventions figure prominently, as well. Gross domestic product per capita shows the expected curvilinear association with lifespan inequality, while primary education (both overall enrollment and gender equity in enrollment), external debt, and migration also play critical roles in shaping health outcomes. By contrast, the distribution of political and economic resources (i.e., democracy and income inequality) is less important.

     

Household size and composition in the developing world in the 1990s

This study uses data from recent household surveys in 43 developing countries to describe the main dimensions of household size and composition in the developing world. Average household size varies only modestly among regions, ranging from 5.6 in the Near East/North Africa to 4.8 in Latin America. These averages are similar to levels observed in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe and North America. About four out of five members of the household are part of the nuclear family of the head of the household. Household size is found to be positively associated with the level of fertility and the mean age at marriage, and inversely associated with the level of marital disruption. An analysis of trends and differentials in household size suggests that convergence to smaller and predominantly nuclear households is proceeding slowly in contemporary developing countries.     

Polarisation of Non-standard Employment in Europe: Exploring a Missing Piece of the Inequality Puzzle

The rise in non-standard employment inspired many scholars to study the social consequences of these new employment forms. Most research focusses on individuals working non-standard. With the increase in dual earnership, however, we need a household perspective. This study therefore develops the notion of household non-standard employment and applies a polarisation index to examine the distribution of non-standard work over dual earner couples. This polarisation index compares the actual rate of household non-standard employment with a counterfactual rate when non-standard employment would be randomly distributed over households. Drawing on EU-SILC 2011, we define non-standard workers as individuals who worked during the previous year, but not full-year full-time. The results indicate that the levels of polarisation vary considerably across countries. Because especially women do not work full-time, polarisation is highly negative since it is less likely to find clustering of non-standard work within households. This pattern is dominant in Continental European countries, but also observable in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries. On the other hand, in Eastern and Southern European countries, non-standard employment is concentrated in some households, mainly because of the inability of its members to work full-year. Common characteristics of household members known to be associated with non-standard employment, like age and education, explain little of the levels of non-standard employment polarisation.     

A combined Brass-random walk approach to probabilistic household forecasting: Denmark,Finland, and the Netherlands, 2011–2041

Probabilistic household forecasts to 2041 are presented for Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. Future trends in fertility, mortality and international migration are taken from official population forecasts. Time series of shares of the population in six different household positions are modelled as random walks with drift. Brass’ relational model preserves the age patterns of the household shares. Probabilistic forecasts for households are computed by combining predictive distributions for the household shares with predictive distributions of the populations, specific for age and sex. If current trends in the three countries continue, we will witness a development towards more and smaller households, often driven by increasing numbers of persons who live alone. We can be quite certain that by 2041, there will be between two and four times as many persons aged 80 and over who live alone when compared with the situation in 2011.     

Food Poverty,Vulnerability, and Food Consumption Inequality Among Smallholder Households in Ghana: A Gender-Based Perspective

We examined gender-based household welfare differences in Ghana among smallholder households. We measured disparities in welfare outcomes (food poverty, vulnerability, and food consumption inequality) across male and female household heads and identified the set of covariates influencing them. The study utilizes a dataset from a farm household survey undertaken in Northern Ghana from October to December 2018. A multistage sampling approach was adopted in selecting 900 farm households. The Oaxaca–Blinder mean and Recentered Inference Function decomposition techniques highlighted the sources of gender differentials in household welfare outcomes. The findings indicate a significant gap in food consumption expenditure per capita and household dietary diversity scores between male- and female- headed households, and these gaps are as high as 28.2% and 18.1%, respectively. However, there are no statistically significant differences in vulnerability to food poverty between male- and female-headed households. The Lorenz curves confirm inequality in gendered households’ food consumption expenditure and dietary diversity scores. This study highlights the existence of systemic female-headed household vulnerability to food poverty in Ghana. This study provides significant evidence of the need for policymakers to address food systems’ structural deficiencies and inequalities with gender in mind.

     

Changing families and changing mobility: Their impact on the central city

Urban scholars and planners look to evidence of recent gains in the number of nontraditional households as a potential source of increase to the population sizes and tax bases of declining central cities. While it is now well established that substantial gains in the numbers of small, nontraditional households have occurred since the 1950s, it has not been demonstrated that: (a) these households are more likely to relocate in the city than traditional family households (husband-wife with children under 18); or (b) their cityward relocation patterns will significantly alter trends toward smaller city household populations. This paper addresses these questions by examining changes in city-suburb migration stream rates by household type over periods 1955–60, 1965–70 and 1970–75 for large metropolitan areas, and assesses their implications for potential changes in the aggregate sizes of city household populations.     

Projections of households and household populations by household size propensities

This paper describes a method for constructing projections of numbers of households of various types and the numbers of people in that structure. The method uses the concept ofhousehold size propensity, that is the probability that a person of given age and sex resides in a household of sizea, c, wherea is the number of adults per household andc is number of children per household. Using data from the 1981 and 1986 Censuses and population projections to the year 2011, the method produces projections of Australian households and household populations by size of household for five-year intervals from 1991 to 2011. The research reported in this paper arose out of the University of Melbourne’s research program to study the structure, economics and technology of households. This research began in 1986 at the Centre for Applied Research on the Future in the Department of Architecture and Building and from 1991 has been continued by the Households Research Unit in the Department of Economics. Reports of this work are contained in the collection of essaysHouseholds Work edited by Ironmonger (1989) and in discussion papers issued by the Centre for Applied Research on the Future by Ironmonger (1987), Jennings (1989) Sonius (1989) and Ironmonger and Richardson (1991). The authors wish to thank Roger Jones of the Social Sciences Data Archive for running some cross tabulations on the 1981 Census one per cent sample tape, Vic Jennings of the Households Research Unit for his valuable contributions in a number of discussions, and the referees to thisJournal for numerous helpful suggestions.     

Unemployment and consumption near and far away from the Mediterranean

We study the insurance mechanisms employed by households to absorb unemployment shocks using comparable data for four countries: Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and the US. Results on family transfers when the male household head becomes unemployed suggest that family networks are the weakest in Britain, while unemployment benefits there are instead the most generous across the four countries. Despite these differences, food consumption losses induced by unemployment of the male household head are similar across countries. These findings are consistent with the view that family support and the Welfare State substitute each other in mitigating the consequences of unemployment shocks. The first author is also affiliated with CEPR and CESifo, the second author with EUI, CEPR, CESifo, and IZA.     

Change of Housing Inequality in Urban China and Its Decomposition: 1989–2011

Housing inequality is a common phenomenon all over the world but also demonstrate discrepant tinctures across different countries. Using the data from the China Health and Nutrition Surveys, we depict a comprehensive, dynamic, and complex picture of housing inequality in urban China from 1989 to 2011, with household as the unit of analysis. Analytic results from calculation of housing Gini coefficients and delineation of housing Lorenz curves suggest that the trend of housing space inequality was steady with a somewhat increase, while that of housing wealth inequality has firstly decreased and then increased. Through further decomposition on the change of housing inequality with a pioneering use of MM decomposition method, we find that the change of the composition of household characteristics only could explain few about the change of housing inequality, while the classification mechanism formed by returns from household characteristics plays a key role in both the change of housing space inequality and that of housing wealth inequality.

     

Immigrant characteristics and Hispanic-Anglo housing inequality

This paper seeks to explain why Hispanic households in the United States live in housing markedly inferior to Anglos’. I argue that immigrant characteristics of Hispanic households and the metropolitan areas in which Hispanics live play important roles in determining such inequality in the housing market. Empirical analyses of homeownership, household crowding, and housing costs demonstrate that immigration plays a role in explaining relatively low homeownership and high household crowding for each of four large Hispanic populations (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Hispanics). The role of immigrant characteristics in determining housing costs is much weaker.     

Measuring Child Poverty in South Africa: Sensitivity to the Choice of Equivalence Scale and an Updated Profile

This paper offers evidence on the sensitivity of child poverty in South Africa to changes in the adult equivalence scale (AES) and updates the child poverty profile based on the Income and Expenditure Survey 2005/06. Setting the poverty line at the 40th percentile of households calculated with different AESs the scope and composition of child poverty are found to be relatively insensitive to the scale used. The rankings of children of different ages, girls versus boys, racial groupings and children living in rural versus urban areas are unaffected by choice of AES, although some provincial rankings on the poverty headcount measure are. The proportions of children and households ‘correctly’ identified as poor for the full range of scales is extremely high. These findings support the argument that it may be appropriate for profiling poverty in South Africa to use a poverty line based on a per capita welfare measure. For the construction of the child poverty profile, per capita income is used as the welfare indicator with the poverty line set at the 40th percentile of household. The profile suggests that poverty amongst children is more extensive than amongst the population or adults even after the massive injection of transfers into households with poor children through the child support grant. The child poverty headcount, depth and severity are all highest amongst children age 0–4 and lowest amongst those aged 15–17, who are not yet beneficiaries of the grants. They are also highest amongst African and Coloured children. Large variations across provinces remain. The analysis underlines the importance of prioritising children in the fight against poverty, particularly in their earliest years.     

U.S. Family Household Momentum and Dynamics: An Extension and Application of the ProFamy Method

The classic headship-rate method for demographic projections of households is not linked to demographic rates, projects a few household types without size, and does not deal with household members other than heads. By comparison, the ProFamy method uses demographic rates as input and projects more detailed household types, sizes, and living arrangements for all members of the population. Tests of projections from 1990 to 2000 using ProFamy and based on observed U.S. demographic rates before 1991 show that discrepancies between our projections and census observations in 2000 are reasonably small, validating the new method. Using data from national surveys and vital statistics, census microfiles, and the ProFamy method, we prepare projections of U.S. households from 2000 to 2050. Medium projections as well as projections based on smaller and larger family scenarios with corresponding combinations of assumptions of marriage/union formation and dissolution, fertility, mortality, and international migration are performed to analyze future trends of U.S. households and their possible higher and lower bounds, as well as enormous racial differentials. To our knowledge, the household projections reported in this article are the first to have found empirical evidence of family household momentum and to have provided informative low and high bounds of various indices of projected future households and living arrangements distributions based on possible changes in demographic parameters.     

New household projections for the united states

This paper reviews the methods used to prepare the new household projections for the United States that were recently issued by the Bureau of the Census and examines the effect on the resulting number of households of the assumptions made about future marriages and future proportions of household heads in the population.One population projection series was used, since all series are identical for the adult population. Marriage assumptions were generated by assuming various outcomes of the marriage squeeze (defined as the excess of females relative to the number of males in the main ages at marriage in the next few years). Assumptions about proportions of household heads were generated by assuming, in varying degrees, continuation of recent trends in these proportions.Projected changes in marriage and in the proportions of household heads in the population account for one-fourth to one-third of the projected increase in the number of households; the remaining increase is attributable to projected changes in the size and structure of the adult population. Varying the assumed proportions of household heads produces greater differences in the projected total number of households than does varying the marriage assumptions used here. Nevertheless, the various possible outcomes of the marriage squeeze, as represented by the assumptions used, produce significantly different projections of increases in the number of young husband-wife households.The most striking finding is that by 1985, proportions of household heads among the population not "married, spouse present" may well rise to such a level that over the long term, the smaller the number of persons who marry, the larger will be the number of households.     

Demographic Dynamics and Per Capita Environmental Impact: Using Panel Regressions and Household Decompositions to Examine Population and Transport

This paper examines how demographic changes can help explain changes/differences in personal transport using both International Energy Agency country panel regressions and decompositions of U.S. household data. An environmental Kuznets curve for per capita road energy use was rejected; instead, the relationship between income and road energy was found to be monotonic. The ideas that more densely populated countries have less personal transport demands, the young drive more, and smaller households mean higher per capita driving were confirmed. The household decompositions indicated that changes in demand were more important than compositional changes; yet, during some periods the compositional change component was considerable.