Coresidence of the Japanese Elderly Are Cultural Norms

Relatively high prevalence of coresidence between older parents and adult children in Japan is generally interpreted as a structural manifestation of tra-ditional family norms; however, recent socioeconomic changes in Japan have called this into question. This study analyzes national data from older people in Japan to examine the reciprocal relationship between two types of inter-generational coresidence and normative beliefs about traditional stem-family living arrangements. Two-stage least squares regression analysis reveals that coresidence with married children and traditional normative beliefs mutually reinforces each other, whereas coresidence with unmarried children strength-ens normative beliefs, but not vice versa. The authors argue that the compo-sition of multigenerational households of older people in Japan is shifting toward a type where instrumental concerns of both generations take prece-dence over traditional cultural ideology. Traditional norms still motivate the formation of stem-family households but are also used to justify instrumen-tally driven living arrangements with single children