Radical transformations in the family are occurring across the globe. Decades of demographic, economic and cultural change have brought about great changes in family life and households. The CORESIDENCE project investigates a crucial, although unanticipated, facet of these transformations: the global rise of intergenerational coresidence (IgC) among young adults and their parents. This shift is occurring in a variety of demographic, economic and cultural contexts and appears to run counter to expectations that intergenerational coresidence would gradually decline with modernization, the weakening of family ties as a result of the increasing individualization of present-day societies, changes in gender roles, and economic uncertainty.
The primary objective of the CORESIDENCE project is to determine the dimensions of variations in and the rise of intergenerational coresidence around the world and investigate how these trends are related to demographic, social, economic, and cultural factors. We (i) use four main repositories of global-scale individual microdata, which describe family change for more than 98% of the world’s population representing more than 146 countries and spanning from the 1960s to today (IPUMS, DHS, MICS, EU-LFS). We include country-specific surveys and censuses not present in the previous repositories (EU-SILC); we (ii) harmonize existing longitudinal data to examine pathways to intergenerational coresidence in India, South Korea, Mexico, Senegal, Spain and Sweden.
This is the largest comparative study of family change ever undertaken. The project will produce comparative social theory by analyzing variation in family forms on several geographic, cultural and developmental scales, across social groups, and over time spans from one to five decades, to make informed inferences about present and future changes in the family. A truly global perspective on the family continues to be lacking at the present. We argue that intergenerational coresidence is a key dimension for carrying out a global study of the family because it reflects the underlying demographic, economic and cultural conditions existing in any given society and it is an observable and measurable variable in most international censuses and surveys.
CORESIDENCE’s primary objective is to determine the dimensions of the rise in intergenerational coresidence between adult children and their parents around the world and investigate how these changes are related to demographic, economic, and socio-cultural shifts. The CORESIDENCE project has three specific aims:
Aim 1. Charting global patterns and trends in IgC. To offer a systematic description of the wide variety of patterns of intergenerational coresidence. We examine trends and growth of intergenerational coresidence across countries, regions, by gender and education, based on newly available global-scale big microdata.
Aim 2. Demographic, material and socio-cultural correlates of IgC. To examine, at the global scale, the relationship between levels of coresidence and their determinants and how these change over time.
Aim 3. Pathways to IgC. To explore intergenerational coresidence across different contexts from a life-course perspective depending on our ability to identify the factors that promote the prolongation (or resumption of) coresidence and those that precipitate its end. This implies checking the validity of the cross- sectional approaches with data that allow for a proper control of living kin availability and pathways to coresidence.
