The
traditional Taiwanese family structure is a controversial issue in family
research. Past research from scholars have produced various results due to
methodological differences. This research, which differs from previous
studies, intends to delineate the internal split and reuniting processes
within the family structure. The distributions of family structure from
the Colonial Taiwan Household Registration Database is used to construct
the Markov model, which analyzes the development of family structure in
different economic status and ethnic groups.
Findings show
that households of different economic status have different development.
In all economic statuses, the nuclear family is the most stable structure.
The households with low economic status are more likely to transfer to the
joint family and have greater stability in each state. The family
structure of households with high economic status is mainly nuclear or
stem family and mostly transfers between both. The occupation of a
household head of middle economic status is usually landlord or farmer.
Compared to the high economic status households, these households need
more labor force, and therefore the development of family structure will
tend to expand to joint family. The transitions of family structure of
Minnan and Hakka households are very similar. If early family structure is
nuclear family, there will be a high probability of continuing to maintain
the nuclear family. If early family structure is stem or joint family, it
is less likely to split into nuclear family. Instead, it will be a cycle
between joint and stem family.
