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Demographic Transitions and Changes in the Living Arrangements of Children: The Netherlands 1850–2010

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Abstract

The transformation of Europe’s demographic regime over the past two centuries has led to considerable changes in the living arrangements of children. We study long-term changes, making use of three datasets covering the living arrangements of children born between 1850 and 1993 in the Netherlands: a historical national sample of children born between 1850 and 1922, a retrospective survey covering children born between 1923 and 1985, and data from the national population registry relating to children born between 1986 and 1993. We describe the changes in terms of whether fathers, mothers, and stepparents lived with these children at birth and at age 15. We observe a massive increase in the percentage of children growing up in a complete family between the 1850–1879 cohort and the mid-twentieth century cohorts and a return to nineteenth-century conditions in the most recent birth cohort. Time spent in a complete family increased continuously from the mid-nineteenth century on, to decrease again from the 1960s on.

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Notes

  1. Response rates in the Netherlands tend to be lower than elsewhere and they appear to be on the decline (De Leeuw and De Heer 2001).

  2. In the case of twins, one child was selected randomly.

  3. We compared for the two latest HSN-cohorts the outcomes for the regions Utrecht, Friesland, Zeeland, and Rotterdam with those of the rest of the country and observed only very small differences in the living arrangements of children. That supports our idea that the data for the first cohort 1850–1879 that only relate to part of the country can be considered representative for the country as a whole.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), P.O. Box 11650, 2502 AR, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Frans van Poppel

  2. Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Frans van Poppel

  3. Department of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Niels Schenk

  4. Statistics Netherlands, P.O. Box 24500, 2490 HA, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Ruben van Gaalen

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  1. Frans van Poppel
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van Poppel, F., Schenk, N. & van Gaalen, R. Demographic Transitions and Changes in the Living Arrangements of Children: The Netherlands 1850–2010. Popul Res Policy Rev 32, 243–260 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-012-9264-3

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