Peter D. Brandon

Identifying the Diversity in Australian Children's Living Arrangements: A Research Note

The dramatic changes in family composition have profound implications for studying relationships of children to other adults in a household. However, methods for studying such relationships have been outpaced by the transformation of families and thus today’s studies, for example, often inaccurately assess whether a child lives with one or two parents and whether he or she is the biological child of those parents. Despite needing increased detail about relationships of children to adults in a household, few surveys gather such data. An exception is the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which collects detailed household relationship data. Analyses of these data suggest that there is tremendous diversity in Australian children’s living arrangements; that the circumstances of the arrangements are equally varied; and that Australian children are more likely to live with unmarried parents than American children. HILDA could enormously benefit studies of the relationships of children to adults in a household and future family-oriented policies.

UTILIZING RELATIONSHIP MATRICES TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE DIVERSITY OF HOUSEHOLD ARRANGEMENTS AMONG ROMANTIC COUPLES: A CROSS-COUNTRY EXAMPLE

Changes in families over the past thirty years have created methodological challenges for research on family variation. Some argue that standard survey methods used for collecting data on families have been outpaced by the transformation of families and hence estimates of family variation are maccurate and opportunities for cross-country comparisons of family variation are hampered. This situation is rectifiable through greater use of relationship matrices. This underused data collection method can precisely portray family variation and facilitate cross-country comparisons. To illustrate the method’s usefulness for family research, relationship matrices data on young persons from Australia and the United States are exploited to: depict individuals’ living arrangements; identify patterns in partnering and childbearing; describe demographic diversity across types of couples; and compare family variation across countries.