New household projections for the Flemish region in Belgium: 2006 – 2031 (2051)

Over the last decades, changes in household formation patterns have been receiving growing attention in the social sciences and in demography, both in fundamental as in applied research. Households are basic units of consumption of goods and services, and large proportions of individual's incomes are spent in the context of the households they belong to. In fact, the whole notion of a household is built on principles of shared responsibilities and transfers between partners and between generations, in a context that is regulated by law as well as by norms and social rules. Transfers relate to intergenerational relationships, care for children or the elderly, distribution of labour between partners, transfers through inheritance, etcetera. Sharing and solidarity refer to income (and tax systems), social benefits, common living space and protection against poverty, loneliness, and exclusion. From a sociological point of view, the household boundaries marked by the common dwelling and kinship are the first major borderline between public and private spheres, and between particularistic and generalized social relations. Therefore, household formation and household structure are cause and consequence of a society's economic situation and social climate. A wide range of domains from housing, ecology (energy), education, health, social cohesion to economy and the labour market are all strongly dependent on or mediated by the household situation. This paper however, is on population projections. Since population projections are an important planning instrument in the fields mentioned above, incorporating differentiation between household types in projections is an obvious demand. Going somewhat further, we argue that multi-state household projections not only offer more detail, but also help doing a better job of predicting the future age-structure and population seize of populations. To sum up, rather then insisting further on the relevance of new data relating to household change, we want to go into the applications in the field of demography and planning.

Publication year:2008

Keywords:LIPRO, household projections