Residential Patterns of Parents and Their Married Children in Contemporary China

Southern Demographic Association
Residential Patterns of Parents and Their Married Children in Contemporary China: A Life
Course Approach
Author(s): Feinian Chen
Source: Population Research and Policy Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 125-148
Published by: Springer in cooperation with the Southern Demographic Association
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Population Research and Policy Review (2005) 24: 125-148 © Springer 2005
Residential patterns of parents and their married children

in contemporary China: A life course approach
FEINIAN CHEN
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh,
NC 27695-8107, USA
Abstract. This paper examines the residential pattern of parents and their married
children in contemporary China. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991,
1993, 1997), the analysis shows that the residential pattern of parents and their married
children is not a static phenomenon, but changes over the life span. The analysis pro-
vides evidence that parental residence often responds to changed circumstances over the
life course, adjusting to the need of married children as well as that of their parents. It is
found that childcare needs, death of one parent, and health status of parents all play
important roles in transitions in parental residence.
Keywords: parental residence, living arrangements, family change in China
Introduction
In East Asian countries, where historically the patrilocal extended

family has been the traditional family form, the pattern of coresidence
of parents with their married children is often regarded as an important
gauge of shifts in social norms and traditional values (Levy 1949; Whyte
1973). From the perspective of modernization theory, industrialization,
urbanization, and improved living conditions would be expected to
change normative prescriptions and consequently transform the family
structure from an extended to a nuclear form (Goode 1970). So far,
however, the actual evidence seems to be inconclusive. While declines in
coresidence level were observed in many settings, such as China
(mainland), Taiwan, and Japan, indicating a trend of convergence to the
nuclear family form, it has been noted by some researchers that the level
of coresidence remained high enough to suggest the persistence of tra-
ditional family norms (Kawabe & Shimizu 1994; Knodel & Debavalya
1997; Lavely & Ren 1992; Weinstein et al. 1990).
However, cultural/ideational expectation is only one of the factors
influencing family patterns in East Asia. The residence of parents and
126 FEINIANCHEN
their children is also known to be adaptive to family needs and

responsive to specific socioeconomic conditions. Living arrangements
not only serve the needs of aging parents, but also benefit the younger
generation, for example, in terms of childcare or housing accommo-
dations (Chan 1997; Frankenberg et al. 2002; Hermalin et al. 1998;
Knodel & Debavalya 1992, 1997; Logan & Bian 1999; Martin & Kin-
sella 1994; Morgan & Hirosima 1983). As a result, an overall measure of
the level of coresidence is not necessarily informative, because coresi-
dence of parents with their married children is not a static arrangement;
rather it tends to change over the life course.
Although changes in social norms over time and strategic choices of
families and individuals over the life course are two entirely different pro-
cesses, it is not always easy to specify them separately in empirical research.
Cross-sectional data analyses often identify marital duration (or age) as an
important covariate of living arrangements. Nonetheless, it is difficult to
distinguish intricate changes in trend or life cycle, because marital duration
(or age) is the only indicator and is, therefore, open to both the interpretation
of a cohort and a life cycle effect. The issue could be complicated further by a
changing demographic trend. For instance, Zeng (1986) demonstrated that,
in spite of a likely decline in the "real" propensity of coresidence, the pro-
portion of three-generational families in China might initially appear to
increase, during a time when fertility and mortality have dropped rapidly.
Lower mortality would lead to higher surviving probability of both parents
and children, while lower fertility means fewer children and consequently a
higher proportion of children "at risk" to coreside with parents, since parents
usually stay with only one of the married children.
The purpose of the paper is to achieve a better understanding of the
residential patterns of parents and their married children in contem-
porary China, using the life course perspective. I follow a sample of
married children over time, using data from a longitudinal dataset, the
China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991, 1993, 1997). I intend to
document how parental residence responds to changes in life situations.
Instead of treating the residence of either parents or their married
children as a permanent arrangement, I view them subject to changes in
life circumstances, suiting the needs of either generation. For example, a
young couple might share residence with their parents at the beginning
of the marriage, but may move out as soon as they are able to afford
their own apartment. Life events such as the birth of a child could also
lead a retired grandmother to move in and help out with childcare. At a
later point in life, the worsened health condition of an aging parent
could prompt him/her to move in with an adult child. Often, marital
A LIFE COURSE APPROACH 1 27
duration is used as a proxy for all these changes, because these life
situations usually happen sequentially and do not overlap (see Dankert
& Yu 1991; Freedman et al. 1994). In this paper, with the availability of
panel data and actual indicators for changes in life circumstances, I am
in a better position to evaluate how residential patterns react to life
course changes and socioeconomic contexts, thus avoiding the con-
founding and, sometimes, confusing cohort effects.
Background
China, a country with a rich historical heritage and rapid societal

changes, is a perfect setting for the subject of this research. Historically,
the patriarchal extended family was the ideal family type in China,
although there was variation in the size and composition of the family
(Fricke et al. 1994). The ideal of the large five-generational extended
family where all the sons lived under the same roof of their parents was
considered by some researchers to be an artifact of the gentry society
and illusorily portrayed in literary works (Fei 1939; Freedman 1958;
Kuroda 1994). Nonetheless, it was common for one of the married sons
to continue to live with the parents while others sons and daughters
would leave the family unit (Levy 1949).
Since the 1949 Communist Revolution, Chinese society has undergone
tremendous changes in its social and economic systems. In rural China,
the land reforms in the mid 1950s collectivized agriculture, eliminated
private land ownership and thus weakened the material basis for people
to remain in the extended family (Huang 1992). In urban China, highly
individuated wage income and welfare benefits exclusively associated
with the work unit tended to undermine traditional familism (Davis &
Harrell 1993). Further, the government targeted "feudalistic practices,"
which helped to undercut the power of patriarchal authority and in turn
could have weakened the ideal of extended family (Davis-Friedmann
1991). While the above-mentioned policies should have undermined the
tradition of the extended family, other researchers have observed that the
communist social policy may also have had conservative impact on
family structure by tacitly accepting patrilocal preference and specifying
the obligations of adult children to support their parents at old age
(Parish & Whyte 1978). In addition, public health campaigns since the
1950s caused a dramatic reduction in mortality, resulting in more people
surviving to marriage and to old age, which helped people establish an
extended family if desired (Huang 1992; Zeng 1986).
128 FEINIANCHEN
Unfortunately, there have been no national statistics available

reporting the changes in family size and family structure from the pre-
revolutionary to the post-revolutionary periods. However, sample sur-
veys conducted in selected provinces indicated that average family size
shrunk from 5.2 in the 1930s to 4.8 in 1973 (see Zeng 1986). The pro-
portion of three-generation families was estimated to be around 49% in
1930 and around 20-30% in 1982 (statistics were based on sample
surveys from different provinces) (Zeng 1986). Though limited, this
suggests that the extended family declined to some extent but remained
an important family form in China.
In the late 1970s, the Chinese government adopted two policies that
had a dramatic impact on the society, namely, the economic reforms
and the one-child policy. First of all, the economic reforms launched in
1978 revitalized a lagging economy in China. The annual rate of growth
of GDP in China has averaged 9.4% from 1980 to 1994 (Summerfield
1994). Consequently, rising living standards, urbanization, industriali-
zation, and the employment of women outside the home were believed
to undermine the tradition of the extended family (Goode 1970; Levy
1949). However, there were other contradictory forces at work that
might have helped to sustain the tradition. The economic reforms dis-
mantled the commune system and restored individual households as
production units in rural China. Thus, the shift toward privatization
stimulated interests in labor intensive cash crops or cottage industries,
rewarding unified budget (Davis & Harrell 1993). The post-reform era
has also been characterized by the retreat of state power in people's life,
which could also revive the cultural preference for coresidence. In urban
China, housing shortages and the government's inadequate provision of
childcare facilities and care for elderly, could well have resulted in
pressures for individuals to find solutions within the family (Logan et al.
1998). Living with parents was thus used as a "problem solving"
strategy rather than reflecting the real "taste" of people (Davis-Fried-
mann 1991; Logan et al. 1998).
The other prominent policy was the family planning policy, which
accelerated the already declining fertility. The total fertility rate was 5.7
in 1970, dropped to 2.8 in 1979 and was as low as 1.7 in 1992 (Tu 2000).
The fertility decline was achieved through delay of marriage, longer
birth intervals and fewer births (Xie 2000). A rapid decline in fertility in
China has had strong implications for family size and family structure
(Zeng 1986). Mean household size was 4.3 in 1953, and, following a
sharp decrease in the early 1960s (due to failure of Great Leap For-
ward), increased to 4.78 in 1973 and declined thereafter (Guo 2000;
Zeug 1986). Mean household size in 1993 was around 3.8 (Guo 2000).
The reduction of household size may also have been partly due to the
breaking up of some extended families (fenjia), or so-called nucleari-
zation of the family caused by social and economic change (Pan 1987).
According to data from the 1990 census, around 27% of the households
in China contained three or more generations (Guo 2000). In addition,
72.5% of the population aged 65 and above live in households made up
of two generations, or three or more generations.
The life course perspective
The above discussion presents a picture of the changing structures of the

Chinese family in a rapidly changing socioeconomic context. There are
various theories addressing the issue of family change. For example,
modernization theory views the family from a cultural-ideational per-
spective, according to which the coresidence of parents and their mar-
ried children is seen as an expression of traditional family values (Goode
1970). Thus, change or no change in residential patterns is perceived as
either the erosion or the persistence of social norms (Goto 1994; Logan
et al. 1998; Tsuya 1994). In contrast, a rational choice model sees living
arrangements as adaptive to family needs and responsive to specific
socioeconomic conditions. Most research on aging comes from this
latter perspective and examines the relationship between living
arrangements and elder care, especially in Asia (for summaries, see
Knodel & Debavalya 1992, 1997; Martin & Kinsella 1994). In addition,
it has been shown that in both Japan and Taiwan coresidence helps
young couples deal with the rising cost of housing and also provides
childcare support from grandparents (Hermalin et al. 1998; Logan &
Bian 1999; Morgan & Hirosima 1983).
In this paper, I use the life course approach, which provides a unique
angle to study family processes. It is closely linked with the aforemen-
tioned conceptual frameworks. While rational choice theory posits that
living arrangements are suggestive of certain family adaptive strategies,
family needs obviously change over time, depending both on individual
situations and the larger socioeconomic context. Rather than expecting
social and cultural norms to tell individuals explicitly how to change their
familial relationships and behavior, the life course model views family
change as adaptations that individuals and family members make to fit
the changed environment. It adds an explicit temporal element and a
contextual element, "to place family and individual strategies of adap-
130 FEINIANCHEN
tation in a larger historical, social and cultural context of shifting

opportunities and constraints, resources and demands, norms and
expectations" (Moen & Wethington 1992: 245). For example, married
children in China stay with the parents, not necessarily for the sake of
preserving the tradition of the extended family, but may do so primarily
to accommodate childcare needs. With the help from parents, they can
pursue "new" economic opportunities more freely, in a society that is
undergoing rapid economic restructuring. Likewise, family needs change
over time, so the exchange of familial support between parents and
children also differs from one life stage to the other (Cooney & Uhlenberg
1992; Rossi & Rossi 1990). As parents get older, their needs for assistance
in living may make coresidence with children necessary. This reflects a
type of family adaptive strategy as well as the legacy of Confucian ideals,
which prescribes the care of parents as part of the filial responsibility.
Following the principles of the life course paradigm, I hypothesize
that early in the life course, residential patterns of parents and married
children are likely to be more responsive to the needs of the married
children than to the parents' needs. Later on, the needs of the aging
parents are likely to take priority. The adaptational changes that occur
from the early to later years highlight the principle of timing in life course
research (see the review of these principles by Elder and Johnson 2003).
The principle of human agency is also applicable because residential
patterns vary according to different family needs and constraints, such as
housing shortage and childcare needs. A closer look at the residential
patterns of parents and married children from the life course perspective
also demonstrates the embeddedness of individual lives in the larger
social structure and gives a more concrete and contextual understanding
of social change. Finally, the principle of "linked lives" is a crucial
dimension of the analysis. It situates individuals in a web of intercon-
necting relationships with people and focuses on the multiple roles they
occupy. In this paper, I highlight the familial roles of parents, children,
grandparents, both simultaneously and sequentially. By following mar-
ried children over time, I am able to examine life events occurring both in
their lives (such as the births of children) and in their parents' lives (such
as widowhood), therefore bridging the childcare and aging literatures.
Data
Longitudinal data are often not available for the study of the residential
patterns of parents and their children. Researchers often rely on cross-
A LIFE COURSE APPROACH 1 3 1
sectional surveys (Chan 1997; Natividad & Cruz 1997), or use cross-
sectional surveys at different time points to summarize the trends
(Freedman et al. 1982; Knodel & Chayovan 1997; Weinstein et al.
1990). With only cross-sectional data, it is very difficult to monitor
changes throughout the life course and to parse out the effects of cohort,
period and life cycle, because one is linearly dependent on the other two.
With longitudinal data, the researcher is in a better position to separate
these different processes apart. For example, a recent study by Fran-
kenberg et al. (2002) used longitudinal data from Indonesia, Singapore
and Taiwan to examine how life cycle characteristics were associated
with transitions in coresidence of older adults and their children.
Another study by Chang (1999) documented trends in living arrange-
ments of elderly in Taiwan, as well as its association with structural
changes in demographic, socioeconomic and health characteristics.
In this paper, I examine the residential patterns of parents and their
married children from 1991 to 1997, using three waves of the China
Nutrition and Health Survey (1991, 1993, 1997). The survey covers eight
provinces in China: Guangxi, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu,
Liaoning, and Shandong. In 1997, Liaoning province dropped out of the
survey and was replaced by Helongjiang, a province similar to Liaoning
in terms of geographic location and characteristics. Because I follow the
same sample of married couples from 1991 to 1997, Liaoning province is
excluded from my analysis. The sample covers provinces that vary
substantially in geography and economic development. Two provinces
are coastal; four are located in central China; and two are mountainous
southern provinces. Both wealthy and poor provinces are included in the
sample. Together the sample covers a third of China's population. While
these households are not technically representative of all of China, the
characteristics of the households are nevertheless comparable to national
averages. (See Entwisle & Chen (2002) for reports on fertility and Short
et al. (2000) for reports on contraceptive use.)
A stratified multistage cluster design was used in the sampling pro-
cess. The initial primary sampling units included 32 urban neighbor-
hoods, 32 township neighborhoods, 30 suburban villages, and 96 rural
villages. The sample represents well the rural population of China.
Recent studies about the living arrangements of parents in China have
targeted urban China, and particularly the large cities (Bian et al. 1998;
Logan et al. 1998; Logan & Bian 1999). Thus, less is known about the
situation in smaller cities or rural areas, where the majority of the
population of China resides. In addition, although the studies just
mentioned focused on tradition and change, the data used were cross-
132 FEINIANCHEN
sectional, therefore limiting somewhat the ability to address social

change as well as change in individuals' life course.
The China Health and Nutrition Survey is composed of a household
survey, a nutrition survey, a community survey, an ever-married women
survey, and a series of physical examinations. Central to this project is
the ever-married women survey, which focused on ever-married women
under age 52 in the household. In the ever-married women survey,
information was collected on the place of residence and the possible
need for help from the father, mother, father-in-law and mother-in-law
of the married woman.
Because of the very low divorce rate in China, the residence of one
parent implies the other (where both are living). Thus in the analysis, I
consider the residence of the set of parents, rather than mothers and
fathers separately. The variable I construct measures whether adult
children and their parents are (1) in the same household, (2) next door,
(3) in the same village/neighborhood, (4) outside the village/neighbor-
hood. The categories are mutually exclusive: each excludes cases that
fall into the lower categories (e.g., category 3 excludes category 1 and
category 2. In the original questionnaire, the item has five categories,
with last two being "in the same city/county," and "not in the same city/
county." Because of their small cell sizes, I combine them into one
residual category, "not in the same village/neighborhood."
I argue that the proximity of parents is a better measure of parental
residence than a simple dichotomous measure of coresidence. The latter
definition seems narrow, although researchers are often limited by
available data. Previous studies in China have suggested that non-co-
resident daughters and sons often live close by, maintain a high level of
contact with their parents and provide regular help to them (Bian et al.
1998; Logan et al. 1998; Unger 1993). Help from non-coresident chil-
dren is often frequent (Knodel & Chayovan 1997; Lee et al. 1994),
reflecting the concept of a modified extended family or "networked"
family (Greenhalgh 1984; Rossi & Rossi 1990; Unger 1993). Another
study found that grandparents both living in the household and next
door provided essential childcare (Chen et al. 2000). In sum, the prox-
imity between parents and their children captures a broader family
context than mere coresidence.
Because the goal of the study is to examine residential patterns of
parents and their children from a life course perspective, I use a panel
design. My sample consists of married women aged 20-52 in 1991, who
were followed through 1993 and 1997, with at least one of their parents-
in-law alive at that time. Because of the strong patrilocal pattern in
China, the main analysis focuses on the residence of parents from the
husband's side only. (Analysis was also conducted using residential
patterns of wife's parents as the dependent variable. None of the vari-
ables has any significant effect.) Coresidence, as well as neighboring
with the wife's parents are uncommon in both urban and rural China
throughout the survey years (results not shown). Parents live with
married daughters only in times of crisis or when they have no son
(Davis 2000; Davis-Friedmann 1991). The strong patrilineal and
patriarchal tradition in China implies a much stronger relationship and
much more intertwined lives between the parents and their sons, which
consequently affect their residential decisions.
I exclude those for whom both parents were dead. The approach has
also been used by other researchers (Bian et al. 1998; Logan et al. 1998).
I assume that the residential pattern or living arrangement is a matter of
choice. Comparing the situation in which parents are dead with the four
categories in the typology makes the interpretation awkward and not
meaningful. After all, I am interested in how each generation actively
responds to different life situations and contexts. Although mortality
has an undeniable impact on family structure, it is not an interest of the
paper.
When using panel data, the researcher is always concerned about
attrition. The CHNS data I use is no exception. In 1991, I start with a
sample of married couples with alive parents (n = 1681). I exclude those
with dead parents (n = 132) in the 1993 sample, and then further
exclude 158 couples with dead parents in the 1997 sample. In addition,
I exclude couples lost to follow up (n = 331 in 1993, n = 321 in 1997).
Although the sample attrition rate is above 20% in these CHNS
samples, this does not mean that it is a serious threat to the validity of
the study. For instance, Fitzgerald et al. (1998) found that inferential
statistics from the Michigan Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID)
were not much affected despite a 50% sample loss over time. In order to
determine whether couples deleted from the sample differ from those
who remain in the sample, I examine the missing data issue in two ways.
First, for the couples lost to follow up, the univariate distribution of
parental residence in the previous round of survey is not dissimilar from
that of the general population. Thus, the missing data are at least not
selective on the dependent variable. Second, I use logistic regression
models to determine whether missing dependent variable is selective on
the independent variables. The dependent variable I used is whether the
couple dropped out of the sample (1 = yes, 0 = no). The independent
variables include region of residence (urban/rural), logged household
134 FEINIANCHEN
income, number of preschool children in the house, whether parents

need help or not, and marriage cohort. The results (not shown) sug-
gested that missing couples are not selective on most of the independent
variables, except that younger and urban couples are more likely to
drop out. This is expected, as they were more mobile compared with the
rest of the population. This should not pose a major threat to the
validity of the findings, as they are not the main variables of interest and
do not interact with the main variables.
The residential pattern of married children and parents
Table 1 shows the residential patterns of parents on the husband's side

in the selected CHNS sample across three survey years. Patrilocal co-
residence is relatively stable over the 6-year period: 34.4% in 1991,
33.7% in 1993, and 30.9% in 1997. Looking at the urban and rural
samples separately, coresidence with parents from the husband's side is
higher in urban than rural areas at all years. This pattern is likely due to
housing shortages in the urban areas, as well as its much steeper rate of
fertility decline there, resulting in fewer number of children per parents
to begin with. In a recent study of two of the largest cities in China,
Logan et al. (1998) found that 21% of the adult children (with at least
one living parent or parent-in-law) lived with the parents and that 67%
of the parents lived with at least one adult child. Although my results
Table 1. The residential patterns of parents of married children (from the husband's
side): urban and rural China, 1991, 1993 and 1997
Parental 1991
residence r^ ^^ ^^ Rural Urban Jotal Rural Urban Total

(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Same house 31.4 41.5 34.4 31.1 40.4 33.7 29.0 37.1 30.9
As neighbor 43.2 18.8 36.0 43.4 19.3 36.6 38.8 21.5 34.7
Same village/ 18.4 8.1 15.3 18.8 10.2 16.4 25.7 6.5 21.2
neighborhood
Outside village/ 7.0 31.7 14.3 6.7 30.1 13.3 6.4 34.9 13.1
neighborhood
N 1185 496 1681 871 342 1213 606 186 792
Source: CHNS 1991, 1993, 1997.
are not directly comparable with theirs owing to the different types of
samples, they help to illustrate that a coresidence rate of around 30%
from the children's perspective translates to a much higher rate from the
parents' perspective, suggesting the persistence of patrilocal extended
family.
It is also interesting to look at the category of "parents living next
door," sometimes referred as "quasi-coresidence" (Ofstedal & Chayo-
van 1999). As argued earlier, parents who live close by often maintain a
high level of interaction and exchange with their children. Even though
they do not live in the same household, they may not function as sep-
arate families. For example, in rural China, improved economic con-
ditions could prompt the son to build a new house adjacent to the
current one. Afterwards the son and his parents are living in two
households, but the tie between them will still be very strong. The
boundary of the household is thus fluid. As expected, when combining
coresidence with the quasi-coresidence category, the extent of patrilo-
cality is actually higher in rural than in urban areas. The importance of
quasi-coresidence was also documented in rural areas of Thailand,
Malaysia, and the Philippines (Knodel & Chayovan 1997; Ngin &
DaVanzo 1999; Ofstedal & Chayovan 1999). Combining the categories
of coresidence and quasi-coresidence, we observe a slightly decreasing
trend of patrilocal residence in both rural areas (74.6% in 1991 and
67.8% in 1997) and urban areas (from 60.3% in 1991 to 58.3% in 1997).
Stability of residential patterns of parents and their married children
While Table 1 presented a picture of relatively stable trends of parental

residence, it does not tell us whether individual families make any
adjustment over time. Table 2 presents a cross-tabulation of parental
residence of the same sample of married couples that were followed
from 1991 to 1997. It shows that there indeed are adjustments over time.
For example, 21.2% of the children staying with their parents in 1993
were no longer doing so in 1997. The majority of them (14.0% out of
21.2% of the total sample) now had parents living next door. For those
who had parents as neighbors in 1993, 10.6% of those had parents living
with them in 1997. For those children who lived in the same village/
neighborhood as their parents in 1991, more than half of the parents
had moved closer to their children by either moving in with the children
or moving next door to them. Overall, the "middle" two categories
(parents as neighbor and parents in the same village/neighborhood) are
136 FEINIANCHEN
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A LIFE COURSE APPROACH 137
more volatile than the other two categories (parents in the house and
parents outside the village/neighborhood). There does not seem to be a
clear overall pattern of whether parents and their children are moving
closer or farther away from each other.
A test of the life course perspective: a panel design
What could have prompted changes in the residential patterns of par-

ents and their children during a relative short period of time? I
hypothesize that some of these changes are in response to changes in life
situations, both from the side of the parents and the side of the married
children. To test the hypothesis, I use a panel design by following the
same sample of married couples over time. I attempt to document life
course changes by using variables reflecting actual changes in life situ-
ations, rather than merely using marriage duration as a proxy. I use
multinomial logit models to estimate the residential patterns of parents
and their children. The equation is as follows.
LNP^;t = k)n I) = 0iRit-x + fSLit + yCu

Pr(Rit = I)
I estimate two sets of models, one for the 1993 and the other for the
1997 residential pattern. The dependent variable is the log odds of the
married couple i to have k type of parental residence versus / type in year t
(t = 1993, 1997). The dependent variable has four categories, so there are
six equations/contrasts. For the independent variables, I first include the
lagged term of parental residence, represented by i?/,_i in the model.
Lagged models are commonly used in analyses using panel data (Finkel
1995). It is appropriate because the theoretical motivation is to understand
what prompts changes in parental residence. The goal is not to generate a
laundry list of all the possible determinants of parental residence. My main
question is, given the residential pattern at time f-1, what could lead to its
shifts at time tl I do not include variables such as wife's education,
employment, number of siblings, which are conventionally included in
studies of living arrangements. While these variables have undeniable
influences on living arrangements, they are less likely to affect changes in
residential patterns. Indeed, preliminary results (not shown) suggested
that they have significant effects in the cross-sectional model, but are not
important when the lagged terms of parental residence are added.
Lit in the equation represents the main variables of interest: indica-
tors of life course. I include variables that reflect needs of each gener-
138 FEINIANCHEN
ation at different life stages, including births since last survey year, loss
of one parent since last survey year, current health status of parents
(measured by either of the parents needing help for daily activities).
These variables will represent the changes in life situations much better
than the conventional approach of using marital duration as a proxy for
life cycle characteristics (e.g., Dankert & Yu 1991; Freedman et al.
1994), because they are direct, detailed, and exempt from the influence
of cohort effect. In preliminary analysis, I used marital duration as a
proxy for life course characteristics. As expected, the models have lower
predictive power than models with direct measures of life course
changes.
Finally, I include control variables, represented by Cit in the model.
They include logged per capita household income, whether either of the
couple has a state sector job, and whether the residence is urban or
rural. They are used as indicators of housing resources. Higher income
means better resources and the ability to afford one's own apartment.
State sector enterprises often allocate employees housing. In urban
areas, housing can be tight and will tend to make coresidence more
necessary. Descriptive characteristics of the independent variables are
shown Table 3.
Finally, because the data were collected using a multistage cluster
design, conventional estimates of standard errors may not be accurate,
since they assume independence of observations. I used the Huber/
Table 3. Descriptive statistics for the independent variables used in the panel design
Variables 1993 1997
Mean SD Mean SD
Urban 0.284 0.451 0.230 0.421

Logged deflated per capital 6.592 1.527 7.125 1.388
household income
Whether either of the couple 0.246 0.431 0.195 0.397
in state sector
Births since last survey year 0.141 0.348 0.081 0.273

Loss of one parent since last 0.457 0.498 0.496 0.500
survey year
Whether parents-law in need of 0.095 0.293 0.115 0.319

help
(n = 765) (n = 765)
White/sandwich estimator of robust standard errors to adjust for clus-

tering in the data. STATA (version 7.0) is used for estimating the
multinomial logistic regressions with robust variance estimates for
clustered data.
Results
Tables 4 and 5 present the results of multinomial logit models for 1993
and 1997 parental residence. Overall, the results support the hypothesis
that residential patterns of parents and their married children responds
to changes in life situations for both the parents and their married
children.
First, the birth of children since 1991 increased the log odds of
having parents living with them versus having them live next door in
1993 by 0.836, and the log odds of having parents living with them
versus having them live in the village/neighborhood by 0.799, control-
ling for other variables in the model (see category 1 vs. 2 and category 1
vs. 3 in Table 4). Exponentiating the log odds into odds ratio, in 1993,
the birth of children since 1991 meant that couples were 2.3 times more
likely to live with parents than having them living next door, and 2.2
times more likely to live with parents than having them live in the same
neighborhood/village. This suggests that parental residence tends to
respond to the childcare needs of their married children. This is con-
sistent with the literature that grandparents, paternal grandparents in
particular, often play an important role as alternative childcare givers in
China (Chen et al. 2000; Hermalin et al. 1998).
In addition, couples having a birth since 1991 did not result in any
movement from category 3 (in the same village/neighborhood) to cat-
egory 2 (neighboring), or category 4 (outside the village/neighborhood)
to category 2, or category 4 to 3. The lack of an effect of births on these
movements suggests that grandparents may be responding to childcare
needs by moving into the house, rather than by moving closer.
Interestingly, in the 1997 model, births no longer had a significant
effect (see Table 5). (It is possible that the four-year interval is too long
to detect any short-term adjustment in residence, so I also tested for the
effect of births since 1995; no significant effect was found and other
parameter estimates were robust.) Instead, it was the needs of parents
that turned out to be significant. First, controlling for other variables in
the model, widowhood made it 2.5 times more likely for the surviving
parent to live together with his/her children than to live in the same
140 FEINIANCHEN
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142 FEINIANCHEN
village/neighborhood. The surviving parent was also 2.1 times more

likely to coreside with his/her children than to live as a neighbor. This
slightly smaller effect of widowhood (category 1 vs. 2, compared with
category 1 vs. 3) is reasonable. The need to coreside with the children is
obviously lower when the children are already living close by and are
readily accessible.
Second, I found that the health status of the parents mattered. With
at least one of the parents in need of help with daily living, it was 2.7
times more likely for parents to coreside with their children than to live
in the same village/neighborhood. The same effect was not present for
parents living next door in 1993. With parents living as neighbors, it is
easy for children to help with their daily living. Therefore, the worsening
of health condition of a parent may not entail changes in residence.
Similar to the effect of childcare needs in the 1993 model, parental needs
did not seem to prompt any adjustment of residence among other cat-
egories (see category 3 vs. 2; 4 vs. 2 and 4 vs. 3). Again, it seems that
parental needs prompt parents to move in with their children, instead of
just moving closer to them, but only if they are initially living at a
distance.
In the 1993 and 1997 models, neither childcare needs nor parental
needs had much of an effect in category 4 vs. 1. There are several
reasons. First, parents who live close by tend to maintain a high level of
contact and interaction with their adult children (Bian et al. 1998).
Thus, they are more ready to respond to needs of the others. Distance
makes it harder for parents and children to keep the same level of
interaction, and thus makes it less likely for either generation to adjust
to the others' needs. Second, parents who live outside the village/
neighborhood could be living with other children. Finally, strict
migration policy in China in the 1990s may make it difficult for people
to move outside the city or county. Migration for family reasons (other
than marriage) was much less common (Yang 2000).
In sum, the results presented in Tables 4 and 5 suggest that parental
residence responds to both children's and parents' needs. It is intriguing
that the response to children's needs is more salient in the 1993 model
while the response to parents' needs is more obvious in the 1997 model,
although the needs of each generation are only partially reflected in the
measures. This is not surprising. While a 4- to 6-year interval is not long,
life cycle characteristics of the sample changed significantly. For
example, the percent of the sample who gave birth since the last survey
year declined about forty percent from 1993 to 1997. Similarly, the
proportion of parents who were in need of help increased about 20% in
the 4-year interval. Such shifts in the needs of the generation conse-
quently lead to adjustments in the residential patterns of parents and
their married children. The finding is consistent with other longitudinal
analyses of transitions in living arrangements, where the interval
between the waves of the data ranges from 4 to 6 years (Chang 1999;
Frankenberg et al. 2002).
Other control variables behave as expected. For example, the
parental residence is heavily associated with that in the previous survey
year. In urban areas, it is more likely for the parents to live farther away
(outside the neighborhood). Interestingly, income has no effect in 1993
model, but a negative effect on coresidence in 1997 (category 1 vs. 3).
This could be due to housing reforms, which were in the process of
shifting from free allocation of housing through work-unit to a private
market (Summerfield & Aslanbeigui 1999).
Summary and conclusions
Analyses based on three waves of the China Health and Nutrition

Survey demonstrate that patrilocal residence remains important in
China in the 1990s. This is reflected not only by a high percentage of
married children coresiding with parents from the husband's side, but
also by the fact that a sizable proportion of them live as neighbors,
particularly in rural areas. Both the concept of coresidence and quasi-
coresidence (neighboring) are useful to describe the scope of patrilo-
cality because families living in separate households do not necessarily
function as separate families.
Nonetheless, the persistence of the extended family in China, as well
as other East Asian countries, does not merely reflect cultural conti-
nuity. Instead, extended family living arrangements serve as a beneficial
family adaptive strategy. If the existence of the extended family were
exclusively ideological or cultural, we would expect it to change little
over an individual's life course. In the old days, the sons, or at least the
eldest son would always be expected to live with his parents throughout
his life. Times have definitely changed. As shown in the analysis,
parental residence changes over the life course. It responds to children's
need early on (e.g., childcare needs) shifting later on to parents' need
(e.g., health declines and widowhood). It reflects a type of social
exchange between the generations.
The life course perspective is an excellent tool for studying the
interplay between social, historical and cultural changes and human lives
144 FEINIANCHEN
(Elder 1975). While marital duration, health of parents and widowhood

are long known as covariates in research on living arrangements, the
contribution of this study lies in its capacity to explicitly test hypotheses
regarding life cycle, or individual time, without the confounding effects
of cohort, or aggregate time. It establishes clear linkages between
changes in the life course and parental residence. With another round of
the China Health and Nutrition Survey having been conducted in the
year 2000, it will be interesting to review changes at the turn of the
century. With a dramatically changing society, another three-year
interval will definitely be helpful for understanding future trends.
Family planning policies in the 1980s and 1990s reduced fertility in
China. Some of the "only" children of the one-child policy have just
reached adulthood and more of soon will. The impact of these
remarkable changes on the residential patterns of parents and their
married children is potentially extraordinary. The number of available
children to live with parents will be more limited than the current
number. As the patriarchal culture is being undermined and the con-
nection between daughters and parents being strengthened, the
responsibility of children to parents on the wife's side should also
increase. The competition for resources and attention in terms of elder
care should become more serious. At the other end of the spectrum, the
issue of childcare seems to be less worrisome. With possibly four
grandparents available to attend to the needs of one grandchild, the
parents' burden may well be lessened. These issues and questions will
certainly guide future analyses.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 2001 annual meeting
of the Population Association of America at Washington DC. I grate-
fully acknowledge the support provided by the Carolina Population
Center and Compton Foundation. I also would like to thank Barbara
Entwisle, S. Philip Morgan, Glen Elder, Rachel Rosenfeld, Guang Guo,
Wang Feng, Dudley Poston and two anonymous reviewers for their
helpful comments.
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Address for correspondence: Feinian Chen, Department of Sociology and Anthropology,

North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8101; USA.
Phone: +1-979-847-9494; Fax: +1-979-867-4057; E-mail: feinian_chen@ncsu.edu

Residential Patterns of Parents and Their Married Children in Contemporary China

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Residential Patterns of Parents and Their Married Children in Contemporary China

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Residential patterns of parents and their married children

Keywords: parental residence, living arrangements, family change in China

In East Asian countries, where historically the patrilocal extended

their children is also known to be adaptive to family needs and

China, a country with a rich historical heritage and rapid societal

Unfortunately, there have been no national statistics available

The life course perspective

The above discussion presents a picture of the changing structures of the

tation in a larger historical, social and cultural context of shifting

sectional, therefore limiting somewhat the ability to address social

income, number of preschool children in the house, whether parents

The residential pattern of married children and parents

Table 1 shows the residential patterns of parents on the husband's side

residence r^ ^^ ^^ Rural Urban Jotal Rural Urban Total

Stability of residential patterns of parents and their married children

While Table 1 presented a picture of relatively stable trends of parental

A test of the life course perspective: a panel design

What could have prompted changes in the residential patterns of par-

LNP^;t = k)n I) = 0iRit-x + fSLit + yCu

Variables 1993 1997

Urban 0.284 0.451 0.230 0.421

Births since last survey year 0.141 0.348 0.081 0.273

Whether parents-law in need of 0.095 0.293 0.115 0.319

White/sandwich estimator of robust standard errors to adjust for clus-

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\C«M«^rnM^OM v©<NOf>OC1- ■* OO ^ O <N

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^3 & > f^drnd^:dddodoo/oo/do/oo/»-o/ 2^

village/neighborhood. The surviving parent was also 2.1 times more

Summary and conclusions

Analyses based on three waves of the China Health and Nutrition

(Elder 1975). While marital duration, health of parents and widowhood

boundaries: Work, households, and gender in China, Berkeley, CA: University of

Address for correspondence: Feinian Chen, Department of Sociology and Anthropology,

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