Susan De Vos

Using housing items to indicate socioeconomic status: Latin America

This note explores the possibility of using physical housing quality information from censuses to help indicate socioeconomic status, particularly that of children, elderly people and women in developing areas such as Latin America. We develop a comparative scale from six housing items (wall material, floor material, roof material, availability of electricity, type of sewerage and water facilities) since these items are recommended by the U.N., tend to be present in most housing censuses, tend to be highly related to each other and tend to have a similar valuation. A more basic three-item scale, consisting of the last three items listed above, is also discussed because this scale might be even more widely available while providing valuable, aggregated, information. The six-item and three-item scales correlate highly with each other. There is a wide range among Latin American countries in peoples distribution along the scales but the scales themselves seem applicable everywhere. Not only have they been proving useful in our own research, but both scales correlate fairly well with a countrys infant mortality rate on the aggregate level and with an individuals educational attainment among men and women 15 to 59 and among elderly people 60 years of age and older.

Latin American Households in Comparative Perspective

Comparative family sociology has had little to say about the Latin American family or household despite it links to a European colonial culture mixed with a distinct set of indigenous and historical circumstances. In this paper tentative judgements are put forward about the similarities and differences between the Western and Latin American household by examining four of its dimensions: the households relative complexity, the separate residence of conjugal units, the incidence of households headed by women, and the incidence of household members being unrelated to the head. Data come from the World Fertility Survey household files gathered during the middle 1970s in six countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Peru. We find that household complexity in the six countries is intermediate between that of the West and East. Many of the households are extended laterally instead of vertically, because conjugal couples tend to reside in separate households, but often live with...

Household composition in Latin America

Introduction. The Complex Household. Nonfamily Living. Household Arrangements of Children. Household Arrangements of Young Adults. Household Arrangements of the Middle Aged. Household Arrangements of Older People. Conclusion. Appendix. Index.

Receipt of Assistance and Extended Family Residence among Elderly Men in Mexico

This article focuses on help received by a nationally-representative sample of 2,376 Mexican men age 60+ in 1994. In the month before the interview, about one-half of the men received in-kind or domestic assistance, two-fifths received financial assistance, and about one-fourth received physical assistance. This was so even as almost half the men still worked, and over half (57%) had no discernable functional limitation. Using logistic regression, the study found support for the common assumption that living arrangements are an important predictor of assistance. Other factors are important too however. In fact, many elders received help from non-coresiding relatives. Beside financial remittances, help from non-coresiding relatives included in-kind, domestic, and physical assistance. Research on Mexico suggests that we need to revisit notions of a modified extended family in which non-coresidential ties can be important. Surveys need questions about frequency of contact and geographic distance between elderly people and their kin.

A note on the living arrangements of elders 1970-2000, with special emphasis on hispanic subgroup differentials

Previous research suggests that Hispanic elders, as a group, have been much more likely to live with others, especially adult children, than have other, especially non-Hispanic White, elders. It has also tracked an increase in solitary and couple-only living among the latter group since the turn of the century. However, it has not tracked changed living arrangements among Hispanic elders. When we do so, we find little aggregate change since 1970, but noteworthy change in different directions among different Hispanic subgroups. Thus aggregate figures for a diverse minority group may be masking very real changes and makes it all the more imperative that we consider different Latino groups separately and try to better understand issues of immigration and acculturation.

Research note: Revisiting the classification of household composition among elderly people

The note updates comments written a decade and a half ago on our need for a standard schemata for comparing the living arrangements of elderly people around the world. Perforce limiting our view to populations living in private households, the note considers different schema beginning with an examination of household size and head/nonhead data and proceeding to schemes using ever more detailed data on “relation to household head” information and data on marital status. The best scheme will of course depend on the data available and on the studys theoretical ideas, but if the ideas have to do with the nature of the family then it would seem that one is best off using a combination of information on peoples relation to the household head and information on marital status to indicate family household composition. The six-category scheme (alone, spouse only, with married child[ren], with unmarried child[ren], with other relatives, with non-kin) might best be collapsed into a bivariate or trivariate categorical dependent variable for purposes of multivariate regression.

Regional differences in living arrangements among the elderly in Ecuador

On the national level in Ecuador in 1982 roughly 61 percent of elderly people 60 years and over lived in complex family households, but this was 70 percent in the Coastal region (Costa) compared with only 54 percent in the Mountain region (Sierra), these two regions comprising over 95 percent of Ecuadors 1982 population. The regional difference could not be explained by standard demographic or socioeconomic characteristics available in the 1982 Census, either among all elderly people or unmarried women elderly. Rather, the regional difference may reflect underlying value and attitude differences not measured in the Census. As the marital structure of the adult population in the two areas has been quite different, consensual union being much more common in the Costa than the Sierra, we are left to wonder if there might be two different family systems at play. Such speculation will need to be addressed by future research.On the national level in Ecuador in 1982 roughly 61 percent of elderly people 60 years and over lived in complex family households, but this was 70 percent in the Coastal region (Costa) compared with only 54 percent in the Mountain region (Sierra), these two regions comprising over 95 percent of Ecuadors 1982 population. The regional difference could not be explained by standard demographic or socioeconomic characteristics available in the 1982 Census, either among all elderly people or unmarried women elderly. Rather, the regional difference may reflect underlying value and attitude differences not measured in the Census. As the marital structure of the adult population in the two areas has been quite different, consensual union being much more common in the Costa than the Sierra, we are left to wonder if there might be two different family systems at play. Such speculation will need to be addressed by future research.

The old-age economic security value of children in the Philippines and Taiwan

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Household Headship Among Unmarried Mothers in Six Latin American Countries

This paper describes and explores the relationship of several life-course and developmentrelated factors with household headship among unmarried women 15-49 years of age with a child under the age of 15 in six Latin American countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, and Peru. We argue that, in contrast to the apparent situation in the U.S., a majority of unmarried women in these countries live as subfamilies in someone else’s household. Life-course factors were important determinants of household headship. Urban residence and migration status were also significant determinants. In contrast to speculations however, socioeconomic status, as indicated by educational attainment, was not related to headship, either bivariately or once life-course factors were controlled. We conclude that life-course and residence/migration factors need to be accounted for, even if an analyst’s focus is mainly economic.

On classifying race in Brazil: example from a study of the functional ability of older people (60+).

Abstract How should race be categorized? This article investigates the usefulness of having three categories to describe a black‐white racial continuum, focusing on Brazil and the functional ability of elderly (60+) people there. Ironically, even as the U.S. census has started to acknowledge mixed race again, much social research in Brazil has begun not to. Using 1998 national household survey microdata (PNAD) for Brazil, we find it advantageous to use a three‐category scheme that separates a mixed black‐white (pardo) status from black or white when examining the functional ability of elders. We also find the tantalizing possibility of a crossover in which browns actually have more functional ability than white counterparts after controlling for many demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic factors.Abstract How should race be categorized? This article investigates the usefulness of having three categories to describe a black‐white racial continuum, focusing on Brazil and the functional ability of elderly (60+) people there. Ironically, even as the U.S. census has started to acknowledge mixed race again, much social research in Brazil has begun not to. Using 1998 national household survey microdata (PNAD) for Brazil, we find it advantageous to use a three‐category scheme that separates a mixed black‐white (pardo) status from black or white when examining the functional ability of elders. We also find the tantalizing possibility of a crossover in which browns actually have more functional ability than white counterparts after controlling for many demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic factors.