malliperhe

Malliperhe is a Finnish term used to describe a prototypical or reference family constructed for explanatory and analytical purposes in education, sociology, statistics, and public policy. It is not a real, specific family, but a hypothetical model that illustrates typical family structure, roles, income, and living arrangements for comparative and instructional use.

In practice, malliperhe serves as a tool to explain concepts such as household income, taxation, welfare benefits, childcare arrangements, and housing needs. By adjusting the assumed characteristics—such as number and ages of children, employment status of adults, and housing type—educators and policy analysts can demonstrate how different scenarios affect outcomes like disposable income, risk of poverty, or eligibility for services. The concept is flexible and can be tailored to emphasize particular policy questions or demographic trends.

Common elements in a malliperhe include two adults in a parental role and one or more children, though variants exist to reflect single-parent, dual-earning, or multigenerational households. The model may specify employment status, education level, and housing conditions to illustrate distributions and effects in a simplified form. While useful for teaching and policy discussion, malliperhe is a simplification and may not capture the full diversity of real families, so assumptions should be stated clearly when used in analysis.

Etymologically, malliperhe combines the words for model (malli) and family (perhe), signaling its function as a representative example rather than a specific case.