Five decades of household change across Asian societies

Asian Population Studies (December 2024). https://doi.org/10.1080/17441730.2024.2431752

Huifen Fang, Juan Galeano and Albert Esteve

Asian households have experienced substantial changes in recent decades. However, although scholars have examined demographic change from various perspectives, long-term, cross-national, data-rich comparison analyses on Asian households are still scarce. This article fills this gap. Using newly released data from the CORESIDENCE database, we examine household changes across 35 Asian societies over the past five decades. Major aspects include household size and household composition. Results show that the average household size has steadily declined across the majority of Asian countries in recent decades, paralleled by the aging of household members. Specifically, households consisting of one to four individuals have been consistently increasing, whereas larger households, comprising five or more people, are gradually diminishing. Besides, household compositions have undergone distinct transformations reflected in household types and members, but with notable variations across countries. Nuclear-family households remain the predominant household type. Stem-family households constitute the second-largest category. Single-person households, though a minority, are growing in several countries. The decline in the number of children connected to fertility decline is the largest driver of household dynamics across Asian societies, followed by the decrease in other relatives beyond the nuclear core. Coresidence with unrelated members remains uncommon in Asian households.