A decline in fertility means not only a decrease in the number of offspring, but also a sharp decrease in the number of relatives in the case of individuals when people are generally reluctant to have more children.
However, compared to the attention paid to population size, the potential changes in family networks in the future have not received enough attention. Recently, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, among others, used available demographic data to predict future changes in global family networks. Studies show that the number of relatives of people worldwide will decline dramatically between now and the end of the 21st century.
The number of cousins has plummeted
In 2022, the United Nations released World Population Prospects 2022, which provides estimates of population change since 1950 and population changes up to 2100. According to estimates, the world's population is expected to peak in the 2080s after reaching 8 billion in 2022 as the global population growth slows further, when the global population will remain around 10 billion and continue until 2100.
An African boy takes a picture of a large family. Visual China|Figure
The latest projection study draws on the relevant population projections from the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022. Using a kinship analysis model, the researchers compared changes in kinship between 1950 and 2100, and the data showed that around 1950, a woman around the age of 65 would have an estimated 41 living blood relatives, compared with 25 around 2095.
Looking at the global picture as a whole, this equates to the loss of nearly 40% of loved ones. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in December 2023, provides a basic reference for understanding how the size and composition of the global kinship network will change in the coming decades.
"Overall, we expect people to have smaller and smaller households. In most cases, though, these changes will happen gradually, but they can still be perceived. For example, my parents have 30 cousins and I have only 10. Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demography who conducted the study, told Southern Weekend that people's experiences with kinship in the coming decades will largely depend on each person's age, for example, people who are currently 50 years old may not experience the same drastic changes in family structure as people who will be 5 years old in 2024, but in some countries such as China, the changes will be more pronounced.
For example, a Chinese born around 1950 has about 11 cousins and cousins, which may account for nearly 40% of the kinship network in terms of numbers, making it the most important type of relative. People born around 2095 are estimated to have only about one cousin on average, and the proportion of this type of relative in the overall family network will drop significantly, accounting for only about 7%. Correspondingly, the proportion of immediate family members will rise, for example, the grandparents and maternal grandparents of newborns, and all four elderly people may be alive, even great-grandparents.
The study estimates that Chinese born around 2095, including surviving great-grandparents and maternal great-grandparents, will have an average of more than five elders separated by two generations. In comparison, the number of people born in 1950 is less than two, and the number of surviving elders of the next generation is less than three. The number of elders is expected to grow exponentially. For an individual elderly person, the opposite is true, and it can go from being full of children and grandchildren to being rare.
Children and grandchildren are rare, and there are more elders
Around 1950, a woman around the age of 65 might have 15 grandchildren and 17 nephews, nieces, nephews, and nieces, but by 2095, the number of these juniors may be only one or two on average. By around 2095, as life expectancy increases, a woman around the age of 65 may have an average of 0.7 parents alive, an increase of nearly 30 times compared to nearly zero in 1950.
The reason why the case of a 65-year-old woman is used in the latest study to analyze the changes in kinship networks is partly because, on the one hand, 65 years is about the age of retirement on a global scale, and on the other hand, women actually take on a lot of the care of the elderly and children in the family as a whole, and because life expectancy is generally longer than that of men, they are more likely to experience unparenting in later life.
In the case that the social pension conditions are not perfect, the care from relatives in old age is very important. At the age of 65, there are still many blood relatives around, which provides a certain reference for evaluating this informal pension resource. As for the future pattern of family relationships, some of the current demographic trends that have emerged may play an important role in driving this.
For example, the phenomenon of low fertility rate and delayed birth at different levels in various regions will make the number of newborns correspondingly smaller, and with the improvement of medical standards and security conditions, the mortality rate of the elderly will decrease, and the life expectancy will also increase accordingly. These will affect the size of the population and the composition of the kinship network in the family in the future.
The latest research shows that the average number of relatives in the world will drop from 41 in 1950 to 25 in 2095, a decrease of about 40%, but the extent to which family networks shrink varies depending on the demographic development of different regions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where the number of relatives fell the most, the number of surviving relatives of 65-year-old women will probably fall from 56 in 1950 to 18 in 2095, a drop of nearly 70 percent.
In Europe and North America, where household sizes are already smaller, this figure is expected to fall from 25 to 16. As a result, the gap in household size between regions will be further reduced, but the number of relatives will decline in all regions, including in Africa, where population growth is still strong. In Zimbabwe, for example, the number of relatives owned by 65-year-old women fell by more than 70 percent, from 82 in 1950 to 24 in 2095, and from 18 to 12.7 in Italy, where families are small, a drop of nearly 30 percent.
Sandwich Generation
These relatives include parents, children, siblings, uncles, aunts, nephews, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other blood relatives. For 65-year-old women in China, the number of related families is also expected to fall from more than 60 to less than 20 by the end of the 21st century, when the size of the family may be smaller than that of their American peers.
From the perspective of caring for the elderly and children, the shrinking family size and the aging of the population may expose the adults caught in the middle to unusually increased caregiving responsibilities, creating a unique "sandwich generation". As early as 2021, Diego Albreez-Gutierrez and researchers from the Department of Demography at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed the caregiving pressure of the global "sandwich generation" and found that the time spent caring for both parents and grandchildren in Asia and Africa is expected to be extended. The study, published in the Population and Development Review, highlights the urgency of this social phenomenon in developing countries.
The latest study further emphasizes the need to strengthen social security in an ageing society by comparing family networks over a longer period of time. Because, according to the latest projections, by the end of the century, the overall aging of relatives will make young people care for their younger children at the same time as older parents, grandparents, and maternal grandparents. In addition, due to the drastic reduction in family size, the elderly often have no siblings, nephews, nieces, nephews, and nieces.
However, the latest forecasting studies only focus on blood relatives and do not consider spouses, in-laws, etc., and the analysis of related burdens has certain limitations. Although the number of children, grandchildren, and other types of relatives is decreasing, "distant relatives are not as good as close neighbors", and in the modern society dominated by strangers, the connotation of family is becoming more diverse, and as long as there is an emotional connection, and there is a sense of obligation and responsibility from it, it is possible to establish a relationship with relatives. In addition to the number of relatives and family size, more studies are needed in the future to reveal the significance of the changes in kinship networks in different social environments.
Diego Albretz-Gutierrez, who conducted the latest study, is a social scientist who is now the team leader of the Kinship Inequality Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Population Research. Growing up in Guatemala, he recognized early on that, in addition to the nuclear family, the extended family also has an important role to play in the family and society through the exchange of resources and informal care. As a result, after moving from anthropology to sociology and demography, his research interests focused on kinship, an understudied area.
So, what do you think of the projections in the latest study, and how should people respond to the dramatic changes in the composition of kinship in the coming decades? Diego Albretz-Gutierrez recently gave an exclusive interview to Southern Weekly to analyze these issues.
The role of relatives
Southern Weekly: Population issues are often influenced by multiple social factors such as politics, economy, and culture. At present, there are differences in population composition and population policies in countries around the world, in your opinion, how do socio-economic developments affect the changes in kinship relationships in different places?
Albriez Gutierrez: Indeed, we expect that the most significant changes will occur in the areas with the largest family sizes at the moment. In other words, the largest decline in household size is projected in countries with high fertility and mortality rates. Socio-economic development affects family changes because it affects fertility and mortality, two of the main demographic factors, which in turn determine the size and structure of family networks. The correlation between a country's overall economic and social status and lower fertility and higher survival rates is well known.
Southern Weekly: In your latest research, you found that human kinship will change dramatically in the coming decades. What are the possible social consequences of a change in the number and type of loved ones?
Albretz-Gutierrez: I believe we have been living in a state of contradiction for some time. On the one hand, many people believe that family is no longer important because kinship has largely been replaced by non-kinship. In other words, some people believe that friends have replaced many of the roles that relatives used to play. On the other hand, whether it's a nuclear family or an extended family, our family members actually continue to play a very important role in our personal lives, whether it's helping to care for our children or supporting our elderly relatives. In addition to this, they also play an important role in ensuring social placement, facilitating the exchange of information, providing a source of identity, and many other things. This role is so important that we take it for granted. And our research shows that as families shrink and individuals no longer have as many relatives to rely on in the future, we will increasingly have to face this paradox.
For society, this would mean a net increase in demand for care. Some of these increases were long anticipated because they were the result of an ageing population, for example, an increase in the dependency ratio of the population. But even countries that have introduced pension reforms, raised the retirement age, and have planned for these changes have not really taken into account that family-based support is likely to decline in the future. And this means that the demand in the future may be higher than we think.
Southern Weekly: Indeed, in a society with an aging population, the lack of provision of elderly care services is increasingly becoming a social problem. In many countries, ageing in place is still the dominant model of ageing, which means that young people in the family are largely involved in caring for their parents, grandparents and even older elders. If home care is the only mode of care for these family members, then according to your estimates, how many elderly people will need to take care of on average in the future?
Albrez Gutierrez: If we only consider the immediate family members among the fathers, grandparents, great-grandparents, then for a 30-year-old, 3.9 relatives need to be taken care of in 2020, 4.9 in 2050, and in 2095 a 30-year-old needs to take care of 5 relatives. For a 50-year-old, 1.1 relatives need to be taken care of in 2020, 1.9 relatives in 2050, and 2 relatives in 2095.
If you feel that your parents are relatively young and don't need to be taken care of, then if you ignore your parents and only consider the immediate family members of your grandparents and great-grandparents, a 30-year-old person will only need to take care of 2.1 relatives in 2020, 3 in 2050, and 3.1 in 2095. For a 50-year-old person, only 0.1 relatives need to be taken care of in 2020, 0.4 in 2050, and 0.4 in 2095. Of course, it is important to note that these are only rough calculations and do not take into account the actual health status of these elders.
Plan ahead, there's still time
Southern Weekly: So how should the policy side deal with this demographic situation in the future to prevent more serious social consequences?
Albretz-Gutierrez: These societal impact considerations support strengthening support at the policy level for population ageing. In our research, we also call for greater investment in social institutional support systems, particularly in the form of childcare, to support working-age parents and potential parents, and to support older adults. Now, of course, these considerations are mainly focused on the relatively developed countries of the Global North, such as Germany, which do have plans to cope with the aging of their populations. Others, like my own country, Guatemala, now rely entirely on families for informal support to supplement existing care gaps. We don't think this is a sustainable approach. I would say that population ageing is here in most countries, even those with young demographics, and it looks like the demand for care is likely to grow faster than dependency ratios. This is often the case, and changes that take a long time in the more developed Global North will happen faster in the developing Global South. We still have time to prepare for these issues, but we need to plan ahead.
Southern Weekly: In your latest study, you conducted a special analysis of Chinese cases and found that the composition of Chinese kinship will change significantly. In your opinion, with the change of the global kinship network, what special situations may the development of the Chinese population go through?
Albretz-Gutierrez: Yes, we chose to highlight the situation in China, which has undergone a very rapid change in the structure of kinship over the past period, mainly driven by the one-child policy and related family planning measures. These initiatives have allowed China to transition from large families to relatively small families at a very rapid rate compared to other countries. And, for the foreseeable future, this trend will continue, with smaller and smaller families, more vertical family structures, more grandparents and great-grandparents in the immediate family, and larger overall family members.
Southern Weekly: As demographic patterns continue to change in practice, there may be a lot of uncertainty in the prediction of kinship. What do you think about the uncertainties in population development?
Albretz-Gutierrez: Exactly. Our projections of future family structure are based on the latest population projections prepared by the United Nations. These are probabilistic predictions, meaning they contain judgments about uncertainty, which we also incorporate into our analysis. However, the future is difficult to predict. While the United Nations has an excellent track record of predicting the short-term future, it is much more difficult to predict the future. Therefore, we should take our long-term forecasts with some reservations: these projections are possible without major social changes.
Southern Weekly: At present, many countries are actively taking measures to promote fertility in order to change the trend of population development. Will these birth stimulus policies have a significant effect on the situation of kinship?
Albretz-Gutierrez: Family structure is very sensitive to fertility levels, so if fertility can be increased, it will obviously affect family size and structure. It is important to note, however, that there is always a time lag between the changes in the demographic process of fertility and mortality and the corresponding changes in the structure of the family. Depending on the circumstances, this relative lag can be decades long, so increasing fertility will not solve the problem of declining kinship resources in the short term.
Southern Weekly reporter Wang Jiangtao
Editor-in-charge: Zhu Liyuan