Family Formation Processes: Assessing the Need for a New Nationally Representative Household Panel Survey in the United States.

Abstract

The American family has undergone rapid transformation. Careful measurement attention to family formation is important because families are at the heart of numerous decisions, roles, and responsibilities with implications for understanding the well-being of families, adults and children. This paper considers whether there is a need for a new household panel study that addresses family formation. This paper consists of a review of the recent body of population-based, American surveys and finds a considerable gap in the ability to study the implications of families for the health and well-being of Americans. Earlier panel surveys used to assess family life anchored questions around marital events, but changes in family patterns require attention to a more diverse set of family forms. The paper concludes with recommendations for a multi-purpose panel study. The key challenge is to keep to pace with complexity and changes in American family life while at the same time maintaining a parsimonious set of survey questions.