Parity Progression and the Kinship Network

Abstract

Demographers have long been interested in parity, the number of children a person has ever produced. Explicit recognition of parity opens the door to analyzing the kinship network. This chapter first examines kinship ties in models that vary both the level of fertility and the pattern of parity progression in order to quantify the influence of parity progression on the number of kin. We then re-examine the American experience over the 1917 to 2005–2010 period to see how fertility levels, family sizes, and number of kin have changed over time. The end of the Baby Boom in the mid-1960s marked a watershed, a Sibsize Transition, ending the era of large families and reshaping the American kinship network.