An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
The recession that began in December 2007 has been dubbed by some as the “Great Recession” (Wessel 2010). The housing bubble and related recession have prompted researchers and journalists to explore changes in family households and living arrangements (see PEW Research Center, March 2010; October 2011). Have there been changes in complex family households as a result? This paper examines how complex family households changed during the recessionary period (2007-2009) with 1-year and 3-year data from the American Community Survey (ACS). The paper first examines the characteristics of individuals who moved into existing family households, as well as the characteristics of such complex family households, in order to refine which changes are attributable to the economic downturn. Additional descriptive and multi-level analyses explore if metro areas harder hit by the recession had detectable changes in multifamily households. The proportion of complex family households increased from 2006 to 2010. Such households were more likely to be headed by younger householders, householders of Hispanic origin, and to include a family member who was unemployed. Individuals in 2006 and 2010 who lived in complex family households were more often never married. County-level unemployment rates are not as important as the employment characteristics of household members themselves for predicting the likelihood that a family household will be complex.
This report is released to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion of work in progress. The views expressed on statistical or methodological issues are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Share
Some content on this site is available in several different electronic formats. Some of the files may require a plug-in or additional software to view.
Top