With billions confined to their homes worldwide, which living arrangements are most common? (2024)
As COVID-19 spreads around the world, billions of people are being asked to stay home, except to buy necessities or access health care. While quarantine rules are usually the same for any one community, the experiences of individual people can vary substantially depending on their personal living arrangements.
A recent Pew Research Center study examined household living arrangements in 130 countries and territories. It found stark differences by region and country in the size and type of households experienced by average people. Here’s a look at some of the study’s findings, which may shed light on how coronavirus-related quarantines are being felt.
How we did this
For this analysis, we looked at data on people’s household arrangements in 130 countries and territories, which are home to 91% of the global population. The findings were originally published in the report “Religion and Living Arrangements Around The World.”
The aggregated dataset includes 82.6 million individuals from 20.8 million households. Data comes from a variety of censuses and surveys conducted between 2010 and 2018, including the Demographic and Health Survey, Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey and European Social Survey. The analyses required data on religious affiliation and household rosters – lists of every member of a household along with their age, sex and relationship to the survey respondent. Rosters were used to code household types, such as extended family, couple, solo, adult child and two-parent.
The population examined in this post doesn’t include people living in institutions, such as nursing homes or prisons. However, the share of older adults in nursing homes is generally very small; in the U.S., fewer than 5% of adults ages 60 and older live in that type of facility.
Around the world, the average person lives in a household of 4.9 people, but this number is much bigger in the sub-Saharan Africa (6.9 people) and Middle East-North Africa regions (6.2), and is smallest in North America (3.3) and Europe (3.1).
In households where many people live together, the risk of contagion is heightened if anyone in the household falls ill or becomes an asymptomatic carrier of the coronavirus.
Gambia and Senegal have the world’s biggest households, with an average person living with a dozen or more family members, but living arrangements also are fairly expansive in larger countries, such as Pakistan, where the average individual experiences a household size of 8.5, Nigeria (7.7), and India (5.8). China, where the coronavirus originated, has relatively small households (3.8), partly as a result of a one-child policy that was enforced for several decades.
In Latin America, household sizes tend be around the global average, at roughly 4.6 members per household. Official responses have ranged from the Mexican government’s appeal for all peopleto stay home for a monthto the Brazilian president’s insistence that “Brazil can’t stop.”
In the United States, meanwhile, the average person lives in a household of 3.4 people.
Extended family households are most common globally
Household type also plays an important role in how people might be experiencing the effects of the coronavirus. A home that has multiple extended family members – including aunts, grandparents and cousins – sharing resources and chores under one roof, for example, will face very different challenges during a pandemic than a single-parent household where one adult is caring for one or more children.
Around the world, extended family arrangements are the most common, accounting for 38% of all people. This is followed by two-parent households – where two adults live with minor children – which account for 33% of the world’s population.
Extended families are widespread in India (54%), while two-parent families are the norm in the Middle East-North Africa region (56%). In Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, for example, three-in-five people or more live in two-parent households.
In the U.S., two-parent households are the most common type of arrangement, accounting for a third of all people (33%). Roughly two-thirds (67%) of all U.S. children younger than 18 live with two parents.
Children appear less likely to get seriously sick from the virus, but they can infect older household members, often unwittingly if they are not showing symptoms. Meanwhile, school closures are widespread in many countries amid the COVID-19 outbreak, forcing parents to educate – or at least supervise – their children at home. And in some cases, parents are facing the consequences of the pandemic without a partner in the same home.
Roughly 4% of the globe’s population, including 7% of children, live in single-parent households with only one adult present. The U.S., in particular, stands out for having the world’s highest share of children living in single-parent households, with nearly a quarter (23%) of kids living in that type of arrangement. That’s more than three times the global average.
Other countries where children are much more likely than their peers around the world to live with a single parent are the UK (21%), France (16%) and Canada (15%); in these places, the share of children in single-parent homes is at least double that in most other countries.
Older people are more likely to live alone
Older people are especially vulnerable to the novel coronavirus and, worldwide, they are more likely than younger people to live alone. Globally, 16% of adults ages 60 and older live in solo households, compared with just 4% of adults ages 18 to 59. Older women are almost twice as likely as older men to live alone (20% vs 11%).
Living alone has been linked to mental health complications, and, during a pandemic, when face-to-face socializing is discouraged, people who live alone may struggle more than others with loneliness. On the other hand, living alone can be beneficial in reducing a person’s chance of getting infected by another household member.
Older adults in the U.S. (27%) live alone more often than seniors in most other countries, partly because solo households are generally more common among all age groups in more economically advanced parts of the world. In Europe, for example, three-in-ten adults 60 and older live in solo households, including seniors in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Among all age groups in the U.S., 11% of all people live in solo households, almost three times the global average of 4%. Solo households are also fairly common in Europe (13%).
In most other parts of the world – including in Asia – living alone is relatively rare. In China, 5% of individuals occupy solo households. In Iran, one of the countries hit especially hard, and in India, where the government in March imposed a three-week ban on leaving one’s home, 2% or fewer of all people live alone. South Korea (21%) and Japan (15%) are exceptions to the rule, maybe because these countries are relatively wealthy, as measured by per-capita gross domestic product.
Stephanie Krameris a senior researcher focusing on religion at Pew Research Center.
The extended family is the basic family unit and is quite common in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Latin America, but it is less common in western Europe and North America.
The six main types of family structures around the world are nuclear families, extending families, compound families, blended families, joint families, and chosen families. Nuclear families involve two parents and their children that are below the age of adulthood living in the same home.
Children are often raised to become independent and move out on their own when they reach adulthood. The extended family model is often found in collectivist cultures and developing countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as in Hispanic and American Indian cultures.
While most people in the U.S. would identify nuclear families as being the "traditional" family type, in different cultures, extended families are much more common and have been around for hundreds of years.
The nuclear family is the traditional type of family structure you might think of. This family type consists of two parents and at least one child. Society has long held the traditional nuclear family in high esteem as being the 'ideal' in which to raise children.
A nuclear family often lives in a residence separate from other relatives. Nuclear families are one of the most familiar and oldest types of families. They are common in developed countries such as the United States.
The Långaryd family is one of the largest documented families in the world, according to Guinness World Records (the current world-record holder being the descendants of Confucius).
The nuclear family is considered the “traditional” family and consists of a mother, father, and the children. The two-parent nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms such as, hom*osexual relationships, single-parent households, and adopting individuals are more common.
Some of the more common variations in traditional family structure include single-parent families, step families, extended families, and same-sex families.
Among major racial and ethnic groups, Americans who are Asian, Black or Hispanic are more likely than those who are White to live in a multigenerational family household.
According to Ruggles, the prevalence of extended families living together roughly doubled from 1750 to 1900, and this way of life was more common than at any time before or since.
Extended families consist of several generations of people and can include biological parents and their children as well as in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Nuclear or conjugal (a wife, a husband, and their children), matrifocal (a mother and her children), patrifocal (a father and his children), and. extended families (parents, grandparents, children, aunts, uncles, and so on).
Anuclear family is the most common type of family in the western world, with the term gaining traction in the United States of America over the 20th century. The traditional household family of two parents and children can be applied to a nuclear family, as well as other modern alternatives.
First, there's evidence indicating that the nuclear family is, in fact, recovering. Second, a nuclear family headed by two loving married parents remains the most stable and safest environment for raising children.
Industrial societies demand more mobility as people move to work in factories or seek other opportunities. Since it's hard to move many different families all at once, the nuclear family often becomes more independent and autonomous from extended family members.
Nuclear families are more common in urban than rural communities due to individualism which has led to a significant increase in nuclear families. Family is less stable today. More than the family as a unit, it is the individual who is given more importance.
A family group that consists only of parents and their children is called a nuclear family. On the other hand a family which extends beyond the nuclear family to include grandparents and sometimes other relatives also is called an extended family.
3, 2022 — According to a new report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, the majority (70.1%) of the nation's children under age 18 lived with two parents, 21.4% lived with their mother, 4.4% with their father, and 4.0% did not live with a parent in 2019.
Zion-a (76), believed to head the world's largest family, with 38 wives and 89 children. Mizoram and his village at Baktawng Tlangnuam has become a major tourist attraction in the state because of the family.
Valentina Vassilyev and her husband Feodor Vassilyev are alleged to hold the record for the most children a couple has produced. She gave birth to a total of 69 children – sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets – between 1725 and 1765, a total of 27 births.
Canadian filmmaker Barry Stevens has 600 half-siblings, spread out all around the globe. Their father was an anonymous sperm donor. In this documentary, Stevens sets out to meet some of his family members.
We have stepfamilies; single-parent families; families headed by two unmarried partners, either of the opposite sex or the same sex; households that include one or more family members from a generation; adoptive families; foster families; and families where children are raised by their grandparents or other relatives.
The definition of family changes across time and across culture. Traditional family has been defined as two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, and—occasionally—adoption (Murdock, 1949). Historically, the most standard version of the traditional family has been the two-parent family.
The Asian and Hispanic populations overall are growing more rapidly than the white population, and those groups are more likely than whites to live in multigenerational family households.
Pew also found that nearly one third of all Americans aged 25 to 29 live in multigenerational households, now a third of them. And the percentage is higher for young men than young women. Almost 40% of young men compared to 26% of young women.
More people are living longer and healthier lives and families are choosing to have them live at home with the rest of the family. There can be many benefits to life in an extended family but there can also be many problems.
In an extended family household the adults can share their worries, stresses and responsibilities with other family members like their parents, who genuinely care for their wellbeing. This often forms a close family support structure which in turn reduces individual stress and promotes happiness.
Younger children are able to adjust to blended families more quickly and easily than older, more mature children. Partners may also be fleeing abusive or negligent behavior. Blended families are on the rise due to the increasing divorce and separation rates, as well as the declining importance of marriage.
For example, if a married couple lives with either the husband or wife's parents the family changes from a nuclear to extended household. Reconstituted family - also known as a blended family or step family. A family where one or both adults have children from previous relationships living with them.
In matrilineal systems, membership in an extended family group is defined through women, and it is usually the son who moves to his wife's household. Matrilineal descent systems are most often found in sedentary agricultural societies where women perform the majority of agricultural tasks.
Traditional. A traditional family structure may be defined as one in which the child resides with both biological mother and father. Not long ago, the ideal family was considered to be a working father, a stay-at- home wife, and their biological children.
Anuclear family is the most common type of family in the western world, with the term gaining traction in the United States of America over the 20th century. The traditional household family of two parents and children can be applied to a nuclear family, as well as other modern alternatives.
Massachusetts topped the list for the best state to raise a family. The New England state earned a total score of 66.14. It ranked second in both education & child care and affordability. The state is home to some of the country's best schools, including Harvard and MIT.
We have stepfamilies; single-parent families; families headed by two unmarried partners, either of the opposite sex or the same sex; households that include one or more family members from a generation; adoptive families; foster families; and families where children are raised by their grandparents or other relatives.
share. Strong families help children feel safe and secure. Strong families have warmth and care, good communication, predictability, and strong connections to others outside the family. Looking after yourself is good for your family and good for you.
Modern Family revolves around three different types of families (nuclear, blended, and same-sex) living in the Los Angeles area, who are interrelated through wealthy business owner Jay Pritchett and his children, daughter Claire and son Mitchell.
Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal.
This means that 4% of two-parent families have stay-at-home fathers and 31% of two-parent families have stay-at-home mothers. There is a large disparity between the number of stay-at-home mothers and stay-at-home fathers.
Frisco, Texas, part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex has been ranked the number 1 safest city to live in the U.S. It boasts the fourth-lowest violent crime rate and the sixth-lowest property crime rate.
The HomeSnacks list of Best States to Raise a Family in America for 2022 is topped by Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Iowa. It was Vermont's health and safety index and Maine's clean air and water, schools, and safety that gained each one its top spot.
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Around the world, the average person lives in a household of 4.9 people, but this number is much bigger in the sub-Saharan Africa (6.9 people) and Middle East-North Africa regions (6.2), and is smallest in North America (3.3) and Europe (3.1).
