Wolf D A, Soldo B J
Population Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
Demography. 1988 Aug;25(3):387-403.
This article extends previous research on the household composition of older unmarried women, using a statistical model that treats each of a woman's surviving children as a distinct potential provider of a shared household. Additional possibilities--living alone, living with other nuclear-family relatives, and living with others--are also recognized, providing a varied range of household-structure opportunities for older women. The approach allows us to identify individual child attributes associated with the propensity to coreside with the older unmarried mother. The results confirm earlier findings regarding the importance of income, age, and disability status as determinants of the household composition of older women. We find, however, that unmarried children, especially sons, are more likely to share a household with an elderly mother than are married children. Working reduces the likelihood that a married daughter will live with her older mother. Overall, the findings suggest that the attributes, more so than the sheer numbers, of living children influence the household structure of their mothers.
本文扩展了先前关于老年未婚女性家庭构成的研究，使用了一种统计模型，该模型将女性在世的每个子女视为共享家庭的不同潜在提供者。还考虑了其他可能性——独居、与其他核心家庭亲属同住以及与他人同住——为老年女性提供了多种家庭结构选择。这种方法使我们能够确定与与老年未婚母亲同住倾向相关的个体子女特征。结果证实了早期关于收入、年龄和残疾状况作为老年女性家庭构成决定因素的重要性的研究发现。然而，我们发现未婚子女，尤其是儿子，比已婚子女更有可能与年迈的母亲同住。工作会降低已婚女儿与年迈母亲同住的可能性。总体而言，研究结果表明，在世子女的特征而非数量，对其母亲的家庭结构影响更大。
