TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL FAMILIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS IN THE LAST THIRD OF THE XX - EARLY XXI CENTURIES
D.G. Lin
Francisk Skorina Gomel State University, Belarus, 246019, Gomel, Sovetskaya str., 104
Keywords: urbanization, historical demography, rural and urban family, household, Republic of Belarus
Abstract
The article based on census materials analyzes the quantitative and qualitative changes in Belarusian rural families under the in uence of urbanization. The author proposes to use a typology applied for classication of households for family groups and subgroups. Such an approach extends the family statistics. The family structure was divided into 3 groups of families (simple nuclear, extended nuclear and compound families), which in turn have been divided into 9 subgroups. It was found that by 2009 there was an alignment of rural and urban families (3.0 persons). However, this alignment was not uniform in all components of the family structure. Major changes in family composition signi cantly affected a group of simple nuclear families. Here the number of families originating fr om one married couple with or without children has been decreasing continuously over time. The opposite is the dynamics in incomplete nuclear families (children with one parent) - their number has been steadily growing, but as to the equity level, the number of rural families is continuously lagging behind the number of urban ones. Thus, the research results show that the crisis in family sphere continues because of a growing proportion of single-parent families wh ere the children are brought up without one of their parents. We calculated the average size of families in each of the distinguished family subgroups. We show that in general the size of rural families in subgroups is not lower than in urban ones. So it is concluded that the concordance in the average size of urban and rural families is due to the different equity level of subgroups forming a general family structure. If we standardize the territorial family structures, the average rural family size will be higher. Major “losses” in the actual size of a rural family are brought by a high proportion of simple nuclear families without children (in rural areas the share of such families is more than 10% higher compared to the same share in urban areas). Thus, changes in the structure of rural family in Belarus, based on the convergence of rural and urban patterns of marital behavior, strongly suggests that the urbanization process in the village is still ongoing.
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