Zhenglian Wang

Population Aging, Disability and Housing Accessibility: Implications for Sub-national Areas in the United States

The older population in many countries is large and growing rapidly, increasing the number of people with disabilities and driving up the need for accessible housing. In a previous study, the authors projected the number of households in the USA with at least one disabled resident and estimated the probability that a newly built single-family detached unit will house at least one disabled resident during its expected lifetime. This study extends the analysis to the sub-national level by constructing similar estimates and projections for four states that differ widely on two characteristics affecting the need for accessible housing: age structure and disability rates. The results vary from state to state, but all four display a substantial need for accessible housing. Homebuilders, planners and policy makers are urged to account for this need when building new homes and making modifications to the current housing stock.

A Multistate Life Table Analysis of Union Regimes in the United States: Trends and Racial Differentials, 1970-2002.

We estimate trends and racial differentials in marriage, cohabitation, union formation and dissolution (union regimes) for the period 1970–2002 in the United States. These estimates are based on an innovative application of multistate life table analysis to pooled survey data. Our analysis demonstrates (1) a dramatic increase in the lifetime proportions of transitions from never-married, divorced or widowed to cohabiting; (2) a substantial decrease in the stability of cohabiting unions; (3) a dramatic increase in mean ages at cohabiting after divorce and widowhood; (4) a substantial decrease in direct transition from never-married to married; (5) a significant decrease in the overall lifetime proportion of ever marrying and re-marrying in the 1970s to 1980s but a relatively stable pattern in the 1990s to 2000–2002; and (6) a substantial decrease in the lifetime proportion of transition from cohabiting to marriage. We also present, for the first time, comparable evidence on differentials in union regimes between four racial groups.

Household and Living Arrangement Projections at the Subnational Level: An Extended Cohort-Component Approach

This article presents the core methodological ideas and empirical assessments of an extended cohort-component approach (known as the “ProFamy model”), and applications to simultaneously project household composition, living arrangements, and population sizes–gender structures at the subnational level in the United States. Comparisons of projections from 1990 to 2000 using this approach with census counts in 2000 for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC show that 68.0 %, 17.0 %, 11.2 %, and 3.8 % of the absolute percentage errors are <3.0 %, 3.0 % to 4.99 %, 5.0 % to 9.99 %, and ≥10.0 %, respectively. Another analysis compares average forecast errors between the extended cohort-component approach and the still widely used classic headship-rate method, by projecting number-of-bedrooms–specific housing demands from 1990 to 2000 and then comparing those projections with census counts in 2000 for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC. The results demonstrate that, compared with the extended cohort-component approach, the headship-rate method produces substantially more serious forecast errors because it cannot project households by size while the extended cohort-component approach projects detailed household sizes. We also present illustrative household and living arrangement projections for the five decades from 2000 to 2050, with medium-, small-, and large-family scenarios for each of the 50 states; Washington, DC; six counties of southern California; and the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. Among many interesting numerical outcomes of household and living arrangement projections with medium, low, and high bounds, the aging of American households over the next few decades across all states/areas is particularly striking. Finally, the limitations of the present study and potential future lines of research are discussed.

Implications of Changes in Households and Living Arrangements for Future Home-Based Care Needs and Costs for Disabled Elders in China

Objectives: To better understand future home-based care needs and costs for disabled elders in China. Method: To further develop and apply the ProFamy extended cohort-component method and the most recent census and survey data. Results: (a) Chinese disabled elders and the annual growth rate of the percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to home-based care costs for disabled elders will increase much more rapidly than the growth of total elderly population; (b) home-based care needs and costs for disabled oldest-old aged 80+ will increase much faster than that for disabled young-old aged 65-79 after 2030; (c) disabled unmarried elders living alone and their home-based care costs increase substantially faster than those disabled unmarried elders living with children; (d) percent of rural disabled oldest-old will be substantially higher than that of rural population after 2030; (e) sensitivity analyses show that possible changes in mortality and elderly disability status are the major direct factors affecting home-based care needs and costs; (f) caregivers resources under the universal two-child policy will be substantially better than that under the rigorous fertility policy unchanged. Discussion: We discuss policy recommendations concerning pathways to healthy aging with relatively reduced care costs, including reductions of the prevalence of disability, gender equality, the universal two-child policy and resources of caregivers, encouragements of rural-to-urban family migration and elder’s residential proximity to their adult children, and remarriages of not-married elders.

Household and Living Arrangement Projections in China at the National Level

Our projection study demonstrated that, while the population in China will be aging at a rapid speed and to a huge scale, particularly the oldest-old aged 80+, Chinese family households will continue to contract to a substantially smaller average size in the next a few decades. The proportion of elderly households with at least one person aged 65+ will increase dramatically in China in the next few decades. By the years 2030 and 2050, the proportion of the elderly aged 65+ living in empty-nest households without children among the total population will be 2.5 and 3.7 times that in 2000. The increase in percentages of the oldest-old living in empty-nest households will be even more dramatic: 4 and 11.5 times as high as in 2000 for the years 2030 and 2050. These aging population structure problems – with respect to proportion of elderly and elderly households as well as proportion of elderly living in empty-nest households – will be much more serious in rural areas than in urban areas. This strongly suggests that, to avoid serious social problems in the future China needs to change its household registration policy which restricts free movement from rural to urban areas and to adopt policies encouraging rural-to-urban family migration or family reunion after young migrants settle down in urban areas.

Dynamics of Households and Living Arrangements in the Eastern, Middle, and Western Regions of China

In this chapter presented the dynamics of household and living arrangements in the Eastern, Middle, and Western regions of China. The results showed that, if the current age distribution of rural-to-urban migrants with a high concentration of young people remains unchanged, the Middle region will have the most serious problems of population and household aging, followed by the Eastern region; population and household aging will be twice as severe in rural areas compared to urban areas in Middle and Eastern regions. Our multi-regional projections and analysis clearly showed that population and household aging problems under the current fertility policies unchanged would be much more serious than that under the two-child policy. Our study suggests that the inclusion of elderly parents in regional and rural to urban family migration, which implies co- or proximate-residence between old parents and adult children, would help to avoid the over-aging problems in rural areas and the Middle region; this strategy may result in a win-win outcome for both old and young generations.

Household and Living Arrangement Projections at the Small Area Level

In this chapter presented and discussed the basic concepts and methodology for applying the ProFamy approach in combination with ratio methods (including the constant-share and shift-share ratio methods) to project household and living arrangement projections at the small area level. To assess the accuracy of the combined ratio method and ProFamy approach and present illustrative applications, we calculated projections from 1990 to 2000 and compared projected estimates with census-observed counts in 2000 for sets of randomly selected 25 small counties and 25 small cities which were more or less evenly distributed across the United States. The comparisons show that, in general, most forecast errors are reasonably small – mostly less than or slightly more than 5 %. These results evidently illustrated the utility of the ProFamy approach in combination with ratio methods to project households and living arrangements at the small area level.

Epilogue: Summary and Future Perspectives

To provide a summarized profile of our work, we briefly review the major findings of the ProFamy approach’s methodological issues and empirical applications to the United States and China in Sects. 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.4, and 18.5. We then outline the limitations and future research perspectives in the last section.

Setting Up the Projection Model

This chapter presents a tutorial with detailed explanations to help users set up the projection model. You may simply use the example input data files that accompany the software to quickly go through the main steps.

Data Needs and Estimation Procedures

This chapter discusses the data needed for household and living arrangements projections at the national or sub-national level employing the ProFamy extended cohort-component model.