Abstract
Co-residence of parents and grown-up (especially married) children has been one of the most important factors that affect the trends in household formation in recent Japan. This article reports the proportion co-residing (proportion of co-resident population in a cohort), using a nation-wide large-sample household survey data set containing about 300,000 persons in each year. The results are as follows. The proportion of parents who co-reside with children (proportion co-residing of parents with children) had remarkably decreased during the period, 1975 to 1985, especially for younger elders regardless of their marital status. Consequently, in 1985, the proportion co-residing of married elders aged 65-79 was nearly constant (around 55%), while its proportion of unmarried elders gradually increased in accordance with their age from 65 to 79 (60-70%). On the contrary, the proportion co-residing of married children aged 20-39 with their parents had been constant or slightly rising (around 30%) during the same period. These two opposite trends can be interpreted as follows: though the preference for co-residence has declined both for parents and for children, the child availability for parents has barely changed and the downward trend in preference has directly appeared as the proportion co-residing; while the parent availability for children has increased owing to the decrease in number of siblings to be balanced with the decreasing preference. The nature of co-residence seems to have been undergoing some change asmuch as the headship rate for co-resident children has been decreasing, which means that parents in a higher status relative to their children due to their resources such as owned houses have been more likely to co-reside with their children. Therefore, the co-residence is esteemed to have been shifting from the obligatory one to a strategic one.
