21/07/13
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/st/journal/v40/n1/pdf/st20106a.pdfAbove is a link to volume 40, issue 1 of the ONS flagship publication 'Social Trends' (2010). Chapter 2 (p15-26) describes the trend in household composition from 1956- this is useful in showing the decline in the number of households with dependant children as well as the proportion of people married by age 25.
The Appendix defines a household as: "a person living alone or a group of people who have the address as their only or main residence and who either share one meal a day or share the living accommodation."
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| Source: 'Social Trends'- ONS. Volume 40. Issue 1. 2010. |
To the right is a table on the percentage of type of household and family in Great Britain from 1961 to 2009.
It shows that the percentage of households comprising of couple households with dependant children had fallen from 38% in 1961 to 21% in Q2 2009.
This is interesting coupled with the lone parent figure:
'the proportion of people living in lone parent households doubled between 1961 and 1981 (from 3% to 6%) and doubled again between 1981 and Q2 2009 (from 6% to 12%)."-page 16To look into this further I will return to the 'An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing' by George Akerlof, Janet Yellen and Micheal Katz to look at the decline of shot gun marriages.
Below are my notes on the chapter:
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| Source: 'Social Trends'- ONS. Volume 40. Issue 1. 2010. |
To the left is a table showing the percentage of households by size. There is a clear trend towards smaller households This is seen in the average household size (number of people) in Great Britain falling from 3.1 in 1961 to 2.4 in Q2 2009.
The figure below shows the proportion of adults ever married by age and year of birth in England and Wales. There is a clear decrease in the number of marriages from 1956 to 1981. Women born in 1956 were incredibly likely to be married (710 women for every 1,000 born in 1956.) For women born 1981 the percentage of likely to be married by 25 had fallen to 16% showing the both the 'delay and decline in marriage.'
The average house-size information will be interesting if combined with the average age of the participants in this households.
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| Source: 'Social Trends'- ONS. Volume 40. Issue 1. 2010. |
- The statistical information on the fall in the proportion of babies born to women aged under 25 (from 47% in 1971 to 25% in 2008- Figure 2.16) has spurred me on to compare the data with the popularity of the Pill with different age groups.
- The data on the rise of lone-parent families has cause me to return to the data on the decline in shot-gun marriages and births outside marriage and the reasons for this.
