[MUSIC] Hi, now I'd like to talk about the family, one of the central issues in social science research. Social science research engages many areas related to the study of the family. And I'll layout a few examples of some of the big questions that we're interested in. One of the most basic questions is understanding why living arrangements differ across time and across place. Different societies, especially in past were very characterized by very different patterns according to which people live together. In China and indeed many parts of the world, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, households consist of many different related people living together. Sometimes even in the case of China cousins living together with their wives and their children. Another big area is understanding how it ties with kin. Kin who live outside the household, vary across different contexts. So just as living arrangements differed tremendously back in the past, so too did ties with kin. We know that especially outside of the West back in China, other parts of Asia, the Middle East, ties to various kinds of kin who lived outside the household were very important. People organized into clans or lineages that brought them together with other relatives. Whereas in the West, it's increasingly apparent from a lot of our historical research that links to such distant kin, cousins and aunts, uncles, and more distant kin, they're actually somewhat limited. So understanding these differences is very important. There's also a lot of interest in understanding what the implications of these differences are for society, politics, and the economy. Some people have even speculated that differences in family organization between East and West, in the past. The predominance of the nuclear family in the historical West. And the extended or joint family in the East. Actually were responsible for differences in the economic trajectories of these two places. And the nuclear family contributed to the occurrence of the industrial revolution in northwest Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. And finally a big question is understanding why family forms evolve over time? Why do new family forms emerge? And why do others disappear? For example, if we look to China as I mentioned, it used to be very common for many different related people to live together in large households. That sort of behavior largely disappeared in the mid 20th century. And there were similar processes elsewhere in the world. Social science research on the family focuses in particular on three sorts of behaviors, marriage, childbearing, and divorce. One of the big questions related to marriage is understanding why in many societies, and especially since the middle of the 20th century, increasing numbers of people are marrying late. Or even not marrying at all. This is especially the case in the West. But now in other parts of the world, including East Asia for example, Japan. Higher and higher percentages of people are reaching older ages 30, 40 even 50 without marrying at all. Why are birth rates in many countries so low? So birth rates around the world have fallen dramatically since the middle of the 20th century. They fell the most initially in the West. But now in many other places, birth rates have fallen. Indeed, birth rates are now below replacement in a lot of places. And understanding the implications of low birth rates for society, politics, and the economy, is an important area of research. Another big area is trying to understand why divorce has become so common in some places? In some cases still increasing. And why it's stabilized in other places? For example, in the United States, divorce increased in the 1970s. But then stabilized later, in the 1980s. In other places, for example, China, it's still on the increase. There's a lot of interest, too, in understanding the consequences of divorce. Both for the spouses that are involved, and the children that are affected. And finally, there's a lot of research on understanding why the chances of marriage, childbearing, and divorce vary greatly according to individual characteristics? Such as education and other characteristics. In the United States right now, more educated people are actually more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than less educated people. That pattern is seem in other parts of the West. Other parts of the world though, such patterns are not so clear. I'd like to close with an example of one of the things that social science researchers looking at the family are focusing on. Which is differences in birth rates across countries and changes over time. I'm going to give you some of the examples, so some of the big differences that we see. So in the West, birth rates actually began to fall early back in the 19th century. So, that the United States and the United Kingdom had fairly moderate levels of fertility by the 1950s. Both of them experienced something of a baby boom in the 50s and 60s. But fertility declined afterward and is now slightly below replacement. Japan, which had very high birth rates before the 1950s, experienced a very, very rapid reduction in birth rates during the 1950s. And now has birth rates that are actually lower than the United States and the United Kingdom. So low that the government of Japan thinks of the low birth rates as a crisis. Finally, there's China which had very high birth rates right until the beginning of the 1970s. Indeed, it used to be that China was often held out as an example of a country where people loved to have children as a result of their culture, their background and their context and so forth. And yet, in the 1970s, before the introduction of the famous one child policy, birth rates actually plummeted. Now, birth rates in China are lower than in the United States and the United Kingdom. With profound implications for China's workforce, and for aging in China. This was an example of one of the big questions that social science researchers conducting research on the family look at. That is, changes over time, and differences across settings in the birth rate. There are similar studies and similar questions related to marriage, and childbearing, and even divorce. Obviously, these differences have important implications for society, economics, and politics. And therefore, understanding, family, family change and family differences, across settings will remain an important task for social science in the coming decades.
