Poverty Status and Co-Resident Family Structure. a Case Study in Malaysia: 1970-1979.

This is a study of the living arrangements of co-resident families in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area of Malaysia. There are two phases in this study. In the first phase, the determinants of two aspects of household structure, generation length and household complexity, are investigated within the context of a recursive causal model. In the context of this model, an analysis of poverty is undertaken to provide further clarification of the relationships between the explanatory variables. The second phase analyses two surveys in a 'pooled' cross-sectional study of household nuclearity. The unit of analysis is the household. The data come from 1970 Census sample tape and from a large 1979 socioeconomic survey. Since the dependent and the endogenous variables are qualitative, log-linear and logit models are employed in the multivariate analysis. The major findings from this study are as follows. First, there are strong net associations between ethnicity and schooling with poverty; the level and the type of schooling are important analytical components of these associations. The findings are consistent with the fact that the Malaysian society is culturally pluralistic and has a dualistic and dependent economy. Second, the cultural factors are more important than the socioeconomic factors in the determination of traditionalism in living arrangements. On the other h and , the converse is true in the determination of the household complexity. These findings are generally in accord with the study hypotheses. Finally, all categories of households experience a decrease in household nuclearity during the decade, 1970-1979. The most important secular trends are the homogenizing effect of secondary schooling and the diminishing importance of work status on household structure.PhDDemographyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158606/1/8204620.pd