Living Arrangements of Children: 1996
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Living Arrangements of Children 1996 Issued April 2001 Household Economic Studies P70-74 number of children growing up in various What’s in this Report? family situations.1 Current INTRODUCTION AND HIGHLIGHTS Population As in the earlier survey, detailed information Reports LIVING ARRANGEMENTS OF CHILDREN — was obtained on each person’s relationship to AN OVERVIEW every other person in the household, permit- By Jason Fields THE TRADITIONAL NUCLEAR FAMILY ting the identification of many types of rela- tives, and parent-child and sibling relation- CHILDREN LIVING WITH TWO PARENTS: ships. This report describes family situations BIOLOGICAL, STEP-, AND ADOPTIVE beyond the traditional nuclear family of par- CHILDREN LIVING WITH UNMARRIED ents and their children and includes discus- PARENTS sions of extended family households with CHILDREN IN BLENDED FAMILIES relatives and nonrelatives who may contrib- ute substantially to a child’s development ADOPTED CHILDREN and to the household’s economic well-being. CHILDREN WITH SIBLINGS This report also examines the degree to THE EXTENDED FAMILY HOUSEHOLD which children are living in single-parent Relatives in Extended Families families, with stepparents and adoptive par- Multigenerational Households and ents, or with no parents and in the care of Children With Grandparents another relative or guardian. Of special inter- HISTORICAL TRENDS est in this report are new estimates of chil- dren living with unmarried cohabiting par- ents (either with both of their biological INTRODUCTION AND HIGHLIGHTS parents who are not married to each other, or Children live in a variety of family arrange- with a parent and an unmarried partner who ments, some of which are complex, as a is not the child’s biological parent — see defi- consequence of the marriage, divorce, and nitions box for descriptions of these terms). remarriage patterns of their parents. In ad- The statistics in this report are based on dition, one-third of children today are born national-level estimates of children (indi- out-of-wedlock and may grow-up in single- viduals under 18) and their living situations parent families or spend significant por- from August through November 1996. tions of their lives with other relatives or These findings pertain to all children, re- stepparents. This report examines the di- gardless of the child’s marital or parental versity of children’s living arrangements in status. The estimates represent the living American households. The data are from arrangements for children averaged over the household relationship module of the this 4-month period. Survey of Income and Program Participa- tion (SIPP), collected in the fall of 1996, 1Stacy Furukawa, The Diverse Living Arrangements of and update a 1994 study that presented Children: Summer 1991, Current Population Reports, P70- estimates from the 1991 SIPP panel of the 38, Washington, DC, U.S. Census Bureau, 1994. Demographic Programs U.S. Department of Commerce U S C E N S U S B U R E A U Economics and Statistics Administration HelpingU.S. Census You Bureau Make Informed Decisions U.S. CENSUS BUREAU 1 Some major findings of this report • There were 10.3 million children • There were 15.3 million children include the following: who lived in an extended living in households with no household containing at least brothers or sisters present. • There were 71.5 million children one person (of any age) other Among the 56.2 million children under 18 years of age living in than a member of their nuclear living with siblings, 9.5 million households.2 The majority of family (parents and siblings); lived with at least one step- or these children (50.7 million) lived 4.1 million of these children half-sibling. with both parents. Only 3 percent lived in extended households of these children (1.5 million) with grandparents. An addi- LIVING ARRANGEMENTS OF lived in unmarried-couple families tional 1.3 million children were CHILDREN — AN OVERVIEW (parents who were not married to living with their grandparents in Many factors influence the diversity of each other). households without any parent children’s living arrangements. These present. • Among the 18.2 million children include parental divorce, remarriage, living with only one unmarried • Of the 1.5 million children living out-of-wedlock childbearing, cohabi- parent, 1.8 million lived with in households with adoptive par- tation of unmarried parents, the growth of multigenerational families, their father. ents, 47 percent lived with two and parental mortality. Immigration adoptive parents. may also influence the type of house- 2The estimates in this report are based on responses from a sample of the population. As • Seventeen percent all of children hold and family that children grow up with all surveys, estimates may vary from the in if families sponsor and provide actual (population) values because of sampling (11.8 million) lived in blended variation, or other factors. All statements families in 1996. Of these chil- housing for their immigrant relatives made in this report have undergone statistical and friends. This is especially impor- testing and meet U.S. Census Bureau standards dren, 4.9 million lived with at for statistical accuracy. least one stepparent. tant in the analyses of the living ar- rangements of Hispanic children,3 as Hispanics constitute a major compo- nent of new immigrants to the United Definitions States. Both cultural factors and de- mographic characteristics of the Children are individuals under 18 years old. This differs from the defi- population and family patterns influ- nition of children used in other reports because it includes household- ence racial differences in current and ers and spouses of the householder (0.2 percent of children). These future family structure.4 Throughout children are included so that the living arrangements of all children can this report variations in living arrange- be discussed. ments of children are shown by race Adopted children are determined by the reporting of the survey respon- and Hispanic origin. dent alone and not by any administrative records. In 1996, 71 percent of the 71.5 mil- lion children under age 18 lived in A traditional nuclear family is defined in this report as a family in which two-parent households, about 25 per- a child lives with two married biological parents and with only full sib- cent lived in single-parent house- lings if siblings are present. No other people are present in the house- holds, and the remaining 4 percent hold under this definition, not even close relatives of the family. lived in households without either Cohabiting parent-child families are those in which the child’s parent is parent (see Table 1). A large majority living with at least one opposite sex, nonrelated adult. This additional of White non-Hispanic (79 percent), adult may or may not be the biological parent of the child. and Asian and Pacific Islander (84 per- cent) children lived with two parents, Blended families are formed when remarriages occur or when children 3People of Hispanic origin may be of any living in a household share one or no parents. The presence of a step- race. Based on the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation (Wave 2), 5 percent of parent, stepsibling, or half-sibling designates a family as blended. the Black population under 18 years, 15 per- cent of the American Indian and Alaska Native An extended family household is a household where a child lives with at population under 18 years, and 4 percent of the Asian and Pacific Islander population under least one parent and someone outside of their nuclear family, either 18 years were also of Hispanic origin. relatives or nonrelatives. 4S. Philip Morgan et. al. “Racial differences in household and family structure at the turn of the century,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 98, January 1993. Pages 798-828. 2 U.S. Census Bureau Table 1. Living Arrangements of Children by Race and Ethnicity: Fall 1996 (In thousands) American White Indian and Asian and Living arrangements non- Alaska Pacific All races White Hispanic Black Native Islander Hispanic1 Children ............................. 71,494 56,212 46,657 11,631 1,073 2,578 10,428 Living with — Two parents2 ...................... 50,685 43,466 36,837 4,397 667 2,156 7,112 Both married to each other . ....... 49,186 42,333 36,110 4,126 605 2,123 6,627 In a traditional nuclear family3 ...... 39,746 34,859 30,132 2,985 395 1,507 5,024 One parent ........................ 18,165 11,131 8,632 6,320 345 369 2,870 Mother only ...................... 16,340 9,599 7,274 6,088 320 333 2,689 Father only ...................... 1,825 1,533 1,358 232 25 36 181 Neither parent ...................... 2,644 1,615 1,188 915 62 54 445 Grandparents only ................ 1,266 637 501 571 34 24 143 Other relatives only ............... 688 447 272 199 19 22 183 Nonrelatives only ................. 622 622 383 122 9 8 105 Other arrangement ............... 69 46 32 22 - 1 14 At least 1 stepparent .................. 4,902 4,066 3,556 649 94 93 563 At least 1 foster parent . ............. 313 224 153 86 2 2 75 - Represents zero or rounds to zero. 1People of Hispanic origin may be of any race. 2In the SIPP data children identify both of their parents regardless of their marital status. This means that both married and unmarried parents are included in this category in this table. This represents a difference from the CPS because only married parents are recorded in two parent households. Correspondingly, there are more children in two parent households in the SIPP, and more in single parent house- holds in the CPS. 3Children in a traditional nuclear family live with both biological parents and, if siblings are present, with full brothers and sisters.