Assessing the Impact of Extended Family Structure on Suburban Residential Status, 2011

• In Event: 054 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Multigenerational Family Living

Abstract

Suburbs have been demographically diversified in terms of race, yet little research has been done on family types having in suburbs. Popular understanding is that suburbia is occupied by middle-class nuclear families. At the same time, the return of extended families is an obvious phenomenon in contemporary America. Socio-economic transformations and the increase of extended families has been highlighted recently in the mass media. Although the demographic characteristics of extended families are known, their spatial distribution has not been researched. This study aims to fill the gap in the existing literature by identifying the geographic distribution of extended families, particularly in suburban areas.
Using the 2011 American Housing Survey data, the findings of this research are twofold: 1) there were more nuclear families in suburbia than in central cities, but the opposite was true of extended families. There were more extended families in central cities than in suburbia, and 2) extended families of racial minorities are more likely to reside in central cities than in suburbia, but white extended families are no more likely to live in central cities than suburbia. In short, family structure and race interact to determine residential status in suburbia.

Author

• Gowoon Jung, State University of New York-Albany