Family Form as Cultural Assimilation: Variations of Extended Household by Ethnicity and Immigration Generational Status

Berkay Ozcan, Yale University
Tim Futing Liao, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A century-long decline in extended households has been followed by a recent rise in the US, which is attributed to immigration. Yet, no researchers have studied the changing trends as a process of immigrant assimilation. Conceptualizing the change in household composition as a cultural assimilation, we study the process of acculturating one’s family structure over immigration generations. We analyze data from the 1960 and 1970 US censuses and the 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009 Current Population Surveys, via the hierarchical age-period-cohort model that properly estimates age, period, and cohort effects. We answer three research questions: (1) whether family structure is assimilated over three immigrant generations (2) whether certain immigrant groups in terms of origin experience a slower process in such assimilation (3) whether the tempo of such assimilation would be faster for immigrants with a higher degree of education. We can also obtain an estimated period trend, controlling the effects of immigration.