Kelly Musick
Professor and Senior Associate Dean of Research, Cornell University
Background: Increases in childbearing outside of marriage, divorce, re-partnering, and childbearing across partnerships have increased the complexity and diversity of families. Changes in family composition and living arrangements raise challenges in measuring family relationships that our study designs are often ill-equipped to address. This is critically important because families provide a vital safety net for their members across the life course, from childhood through older ages. In Judith Seltzer’s 2019 address to the Population Association of America, she argued that to better understand how families meet the obligations defined by kinship, demographers need to do a better job identifying family ties that extend beyond the household. Our project answers this call.
Aims 1 and 2: We will identify complex parent and sibling relationships within and beyond the household, and we will estimate differences in their prevalence as children age, across cohorts, and by race and socioeconomic status.
Aims 3 and 4: We will examine the income sources of households linked by nonresidential parent and sibling relationships, and we will estimate differences as children age, across cohorts, and by race and socioeconomic status in the resources potentially available to children in complex families within and beyond the household.