Perhedemografia

Perhedemografia, or family demography, is a branch of demography that studies families and households and how demographic processes shape and are shaped by social and economic contexts. It encompasses marriage and partnerships, fertility and childbearing, divorce and separation, kinship patterns, adoption, foster care, and household composition, including multigenerational and intergenerational arrangements. The field investigates how these processes interact with education, employment, income, housing, health, and public policy, and how they vary across cultures and over time.

Methodologically, perhedemography uses quantitative data from censuses, vital statistics, birth and death registers, and population surveys, often linked at the individual or household level. Common analytic approaches include descriptive statistics, life-table and survival analyses of reproductive events, event history analysis, and multilevel or longitudinal modeling to study trajectories of families across the life course.

Key topics include timing and tempo of childbearing, family size, union formation and dissolution, parenting and child outcomes, intergenerational transfers and caregiving, and the role of migration in shaping family structure. Findings have implications for social policy, including parental leave, childcare, housing, pensions, and care for the elderly, as well as for gender equality and economic mobility.

Across regions, perhedemography highlights both common trends—such as delayed childbearing and rising non-marital births in some areas—and divergent patterns tied to cultural norms, legal frameworks, and welfare systems. Data limitations and differences in measurement can complicate cross-national comparisons, but the field remains central to understanding family life and population dynamics.