Forschungsgruppe

Ungleichheiten in Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen

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Projekt

Modeling Kinship Structure: Demographic Projections and Population Heterogeneity

Sha Jiang, Saroja Adhikari, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Bettina Maria Hünteler, Elena Pojman

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Demographers have long projected shifts in the size and age composition of populations, but have paid comparatively little attention to the question of what these changes imply for the structure of family networks. Kinship structures are fundamental to systems of informal support because the exchange of care, financial transfers, and emotional assistance depends on the availability of living relatives. Understanding how demographic change reshapes kinship networks is therefore essential for anticipating the distribution of care and support within societies.

Recent advances in kinship demography make it possible to model the number, sex, and age structure of biological kin using formal demographic methods. These models show how shifts in fertility, mortality, and migration reshape family networks across generations and over time. For example, sustained fertility decline reduces the prevalence of horizontal kin such as siblings and cousins, while mortality improvements increase the likelihood that individuals will share overlapping lifetimes with ascendant and descendant kin. These processes reshape the balance between vertical and horizontal kin and alter the structure of potential support networks within families.

The project consists of two complementary components. The first component produces demographic projections of kinship structures. Building on recent developments in kinship demography, the project generates projections of nuclear and extended kin for all countries over the 21st century (considering parents, siblings, children, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and cousins). These projections describe the expected number and composition of kin by age, sex, and type of kin. They allow us to examine how demographic change reshapes kin structures across populations.

The second component examines how population heterogeneity shapes kinship structures. Most existing kinship models treat populations as demographically homogeneous, even though demographic processes are deeply stratified. Fertility declines often occur earlier among highly educated individuals and younger cohorts. Moreover, mortality improvements vary across socioeconomic groups and between men and women, and migration restructures family networks in ways that differ across regions and populations. These processes generate substantial variation in kinship structures both between demographic groups and within populations.

To capture this complexity, the project integrates kinship projections with explicit modeling of demographic heterogeneity. It draws on methodological advances in demographic kinship models and stochastic microsimulation to represent two complementary sources of variation: structured differences between demographic groups defined by attributes such as age, sex, education, or place of residence; and within-group variability arising from demographic stochasticity and individual-level life course variation.

Combining demographic projections with models of population heterogeneity makes it possible to move beyond estimates of average kin counts to uncover the distribution of kinship structures across individuals and groups. The resulting analyses provide a framework for understanding how demographic change reshapes family networks across societies, and how the potential availability of kin-based support evolves in the context of population aging and changing family patterns.

Schlagworte:

Alterung, Sterblichkeit und Langlebigkeit, Demografischer Wandel, Familienverhalten, Gesundheitsversorgung, Public Health, Medizin und Epidemiologie, intergenerationelle Beziehungen

Schlagworte (Region):

Welt