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Title: Famililes as Roommates: Changes in U.S. Household Size From 1850 to 2000

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2009

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Abstract: Living arrangements have changed enormously over the last two centuries. While the average Americantoday lives in a household of only three people, in 1850 household size was twice that figure. Further,both the number of children and the number of adults in a household have fallen dramatically. Wedevelop a simple theory of household size where living with others is beneficial solely because thecosts of household public goods can be shared. In other words, we abstract from intra-family relationsand focus on households as collections of roommates. The model's mechanism is that rising incomeleads to a falling expenditure share on household public goods, which endogenously makes householdformation less beneficial and privacy more attractive. To assess the magnitude of this mechanism,we first calibrate the model to match the relationship between household size, consumption patterns,and income in the cross-section at the end of the 20th century. We then project the model back to1850 by changing income. We find that our proposed mechanism can account for 37 percent of thedecline in the number of adults in a household between 1850 and 2000, and for 16 percent of the declinein the number of children.

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Authors: Tertilt, Michle; Salcedo, Alejandro; Schoellman, Todd

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Publication Number: 15477

Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Publisher Location: Cambridge, MA

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Housing and Segregation, Other

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