In the future people have fewer and fewer relatives. Kato is especially common among relatives, siblings and cousins of roughly the same age.
On the other hand, even great-grandparents are more often alive with their great-grandchildren at the same time.
Demographer at the German Max Planck Institute Diego Alburez-Gutierrez and his co-workers trusting In the Pnas scientific journal, global metamorphosis of genera. It is driven by four demographic trends.
Family structures are being revolutionized both by the decrease in the mortality of newborns and the elderly, as well as by the decrease in the number of children and the postponement of having children.
As a material researchers had UN population statistics and projections. Among other things, they determined the average number of relatives in 1950 and in 2095 for a female, 65-year-old sample person.
Siblings, cousins, uncles, father-in-laws, aunts and children of brothers and sisters in direct descending or ascending descent were included.
A woman was chosen as an example person, because women give the most help to relatives and they also have to live without relatives more often than men in later life.
“We predict that the size of families will shrink permanently all over the world. We foresee the greatest decrease in South America and the Caribbean”, Alburez-Gutierrez tells in the bulletin.
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Kinship networks become obsolete when life expectancy increases and having children is postponed.
The whole world the calculations showed that while a 65-year-old woman had 41 living relatives in 1950, in 2095 a woman of the same age will only have 25 relatives. The reduction is almost 40 percent.
However, the loss of relatives varies by region. In South America and the Caribbean, the average number of relatives of an exemplary woman will clearly decrease from 56 in 1950. The number will be just over 18 in 2095.
In Europe and North America, the forces that change families have been raging longer.
Thus, in these continents, the example woman had only 25 living relatives already in 1950. However, the number continues to decrease, to around 16 at the end of the current century.
Kin networks also become obsolete when life expectancy increases and having children is postponed. The researchers now took a 35-year-old woman as an example.
The researchers calculated the change in the age of relatives in the direct descending or ascending line of such a woman, who often lives in peak years, from European countries to Italy.
While in 1950 a woman's mother was on average around 61 years old and a living grandmother 78 years old, at the end of this century the mother is a good five and the grandmother almost ten years older.
The increase in life expectancy also means that young children have living grandparents much more often than in earlier times.
“Our observations confirm that the resources provided by relatives are waning all over the world. When the age gap with relatives increases, people not only have smaller kinship networks, but also older ones,” says Alburez-Gutierrez.
He reminds that even if there will be more grandparents and great-grandparents in the future and they could in principle help with childcare, they may still need help themselves due to their deteriorating health.
Therefore, the burden of caring for the middle-aged will probably increase. This is especially the case in those countries where there are not enough care services organized by society.
Published in Tiede magazine 2/2024.
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