Industrialization and Household Complexity in Rural Taiwan

Abstract

Industrialization is generally believed to undermine the rural extended family household, but this study of Taiwanese farm households finds the contrary to be true. An analysis of 274 townships in 1960 and 1970 reveals that farm household complexity is positively associated with industrialization as measured by the proportion of the labor force in nonagricultural occupations, both cross-sectionally and over time. The propensity of farm families to combine into extended units is influenced by the availability of productive resources, whether agricultural or industrial. In the classical case, industry undermines the extended family by drawing kinsmen into cities; in Taiwan, where industry has grown up in proximity to family farms, the extended household has thrived. Ethnographic evidence suggests that the semi-agricultural extended households are less patriarchal and more egalitarian; still, industrial employment itself does not seem inimical to extended living arrangements.

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