Family change and variation through the lens of family configurations in low‐ and middle‐income countries

Abstract

Using 254 Demographic and Health Surveys from 75 low‐ and middle‐income countries, this study shows how the joint examination of family characteristics across rural and urban areas provides new insights for understanding global family change. We operationalise this approach by building family configurations: a set of interrelated features that describe different patterns of family formation and structure. These features include partnership (marriage/unions) regimes and their stability, gender relations, household composition and reproduction. Factorial and clustering techniques allow us to summarise these family features into three factorial axes and six discrete family configurations. We provide an in‐depth description of these configurations, their spatial distribution and their changes over time. Global family change is uneven because it emerges from complex interplays between the relative steadiness of longstanding arrangements for forming families and organising gender relations, and the rapidly changing dynamics observed in the realms of fertility, contraception, and timing of family formation.

Union formation, within‐couple dynamics, and child well‐being: A global macrolevel perspective

“…For each country wave, we compute six macrolevel indicators of partnership events and behaviours developed and tested in previous studies on global family change (e.g., Bras & Smits, 2022; Castro Torres et al, 2022; Pesando & GFC‐team, 2019) and we divide them into two groups: (i) indicators reflecting gender differences within partnerships ( within‐couple dynamics ): age differences between partners (male partner minus female partner), differences in years of schooling between partners (male partner minus female partner), and a measure of women's decision‐making power describing the degree to which partners make joint decisions in the household (proportion of women that have a say in decisions about large purchases) and (ii) broad indicators describing patterns of partnerships ( union formation ): singulate mean age at marriage (SMAM), prevalence of marriage, and prevalence of divorce and separation. The latter two indicators are calculated for women who were 25 years old and above at the time of the survey, to ensure that timing of marriage (captured by SMAM) is not embedded in the latter measures as well.…”

“…Studies on global changes in families have greatly increased over the past decade, adopting a country‐specific and, more recently, a cross‐national comparative perspective (Bongaarts et al, 2017; Bongaarts, 2001; Castro Torres et al, 2022; Cherlin, 2016; Clark & Brauner‐Otto, 2015; Clark et al, 2017; Davis et al, 2015; Esteve et al, 2016; Koski et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2017; Pesando & GFC‐team, 2019; Raymo, Carlson, et al, 2015; Ruggles & Heggeness, 2008). A growing literature has examined cross‐nationally some of the determinants of why families are changing in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs).…”

“…As such, there is a noticeable scarcity of cross‐national studies providing an assessment of how specific and often intertwined aspects of the family may be related to a range of children's outcomes across LMICs, thus limiting our understanding of the potential meso‐ and macrolevel factors that may underlie heterogeneous findings. We capture these family domains through multiple dimensions and indicators developed and tested in previous studies (such as, for instance, Bras & Smits, 2022; Castro Torres et al, 2022; Pesando & GFC‐team 2019) such as age and educational differences between spouses, women's decision‐making power vis‐à‐vis their male partners, marriage timing, and prevalence of marriage and divorce. Cross‐national comparative studies may help scholars identify common structural factors underpinning differences in future generations' outcomes across LMICs, including gender, health, and educational dynamics, as well as potential regional “exceptionalisms” where these structural factors may follow unexpected patterns that do not necessarily conform to extant theoretical predictions which may be (i) more applicable to high‐income societies (HICs), (ii) more applicable to individual‐level analyses, or (iii) a combination thereof.…”

“…Expanding knowledge about the links between demographic behaviour and child well‐being outside of HICs is important given recent studies from LMICs highlighting that the features of unions, such as their type or stability, may be less responsive to socioeconomic changes—relative to HICs (Castro Torres et al, 2022; Pesando, 2021). Recent research has also shown substantial variation, between and within LMICs, in partnership and gender regimes, as well as a large degree of heterogeneity in the duration of the process of union formation (Jackson, 2012; Legrand & Barbieri, 2002; Lesthaeghe, 2020; Raymo, Park, et al, 2015).…”

Born or not: A moderated mediation model of the relationship between work-family conflict and female employees' wellbeing based on fertility intention during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…It has been suggested that good family relationships have an important impact on individuals' perceived wellbeing (38). In family relationships, childbearing and the number of children are important aspects in reconciling family relationships (39). Studies point out that people with children are generally happier than those without children (40); having two or more children is happier than having only one child (41).…”