Diversity and change in Filipino households, 1990–2015

ABSTRACT

Using census and survey data, this study documents the changes in household size and structure in the Philippines from 1990 to 2015 and explores how demographic and socioeconomic factors have played a role in these changes. It also describes the living arrangements of Filipino children and young adults, recently married young women, and older people, to examine how demographic and socioeconomic factors modify the immediate social environment of Filipinos across their life course. Results show that contrary to the predictions of the modernisation hypothesis, the share of nuclear households in the Philippines declined, while the proportion of extended households remained stable over time. In addition, most Filipino children still live with both parents. However, the proportion in this arrangement declined recently, while the share who live with a single parent or neither parent increased. There is also a prolonged parental co-residence after marriage, as evidenced by the higher proportion of newly married women living with their parents or parents-in-law compared to women in the past. Finally, living with children is still very common among older Filipinos, but the share who do so has dropped sharply. In contrast, the proportions living alone or with a spouse only have increased over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Filipino households
• nuclear and extended households
• one-person households
• Philippines
• family
• modernisation

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the generous support of the OUE Ltd. and the Stephen Riady Foundation for this research. Support by the Asia Research Institute and the Centre for Family and Population Research at the National University of Singapore is also gratefully acknowledged. We also thank the Philippine Statistics Authority, the PopArchive of the University of the Philippines Population Institute and the Demographic and Development Foundation, Inc., as well as the IPUMS International at the Minnesota Population Center, for providing the data for this research. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which have helped improve our paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The 2021 YAFS was conducted by the University of the Philippines Population Institute with funding from the Department of Health (DOH).

2 The 2018 LSAHP was commissioned by the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) in collaboration with the Demographic Research and Development Foundation, Inc. (DRDF).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Lippo Group and Stephen Riady Foundation; Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.