Demographic Decomposition of Elderly Living Arrangements: A Mexican Example

Household living arrangements are one indicator of support. A step in identifying the potential policy implications of social indicators is to distinguish the extent to which population or group differences arise from variations in population composition as opposed to differences in underlying rates or propensities. In this paper the utility of a demographic decomposition for comparative research is demonstrated by decomposing gender differences in extended household living arrangements for elderly Mexicans. The significantly higher proportions of women living with extended kin is primarily the result of gender differences in age-specific marital status and only secondarily the results of actual differences in propensities toward this type of living arrangement. The decomposition is a flexible analytic tool for comparing societies or sub-groups in a population, or examining social change in elderly living arrangements. The utility and limitations of this analytic tool are discussed.

Dataset(s): National Demographic Survey (END), Consejo Nacional de Poblacion-Mexico: Mexico, 1982.