The size of the average family may shrink significantly in the coming decades, scientists have forecast.
An individual is predicted to have 35 percent fewer relatives by 2095, with the number of younger relatives like cousins, nieces, nephews and grandchildren falling, according to a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
While the average 65-year-old woman in 1950 had an average of 41 relatives still alive, a woman of the same age will only have 25 by 2095, most of whom will be older relatives like great-grandparents and grandparents.
"These seismic shifts in family structure will bring about important societal challenges that policymakers in the global North and South should consider," Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, paper co-author and head of the Independent Research Group on Kinship Inequalities at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), said in a statement.
To arrive at these predictions, the researchers—hailing from the MPIDR in Germany, the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Amsterdam—compiled data on family sizes from around the world using historical and projected data from the 2022 revision of the United Nation's World Population Prospects, and analyzed how those families were changing.
The researchers defined relatives as living parents, children, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, siblings, cousins, grandchildren, great-grandparents, grandparents, and great-grandchildren.
"The number of relatives that we have is the result of some other relative reproducing. For example, the number of cousins I have depends on the number of children that my aunts/uncles had; the number of uncles I have depends on the number of children that my grandparents had, and so on," Alburez-Gutierrez told Newsweek. "Similarly, the number of relatives I have depends on the survival of these people. In order for me to have a living grandmother, she must have survived to (in my case) her 80th birthday."
"Basically, changes in these two factors (reproduction and survival) shape the number of relatives that an average member of the population has. Birth and death rates behave (on the whole) in predictable ways. Given what we call the 'demographic transition,' we expect mortality and fertility in any given population to go from being relatively high to being relatively low," he said.
They also found that the decline in family size may affect some areas of the world more than others, with the greatest declines in South America and the Caribbean.
The average 65-year-old South American women had 56 relatives in 1950, a number that is expected to drop to 18.3 by 2095. In North America and Europe, where the average 65-year-old woman had 25 relatives in 1950, she can expect to have 15.9 relatives in 2095. Many of these remaining relatives are expected to be older rather than younger.
An aging population is expected to have a major impact on the availability of care for the elderly, especially those with fewer younger relatives.
"Demographic transition causes population aging, since people live longer and there are fewer younger people being born. So, in any given population there will be a higher ratio of older to younger people," Alburez-Gutierrez said. "This is something that we have known for a long time and which has implications for societies since a smaller cohort of young individuals in working age need to support a growing number of older individuals.
"What we didn't know is that the demographic transition would also affect families in such a dramatic way. This is partly because it can take a long time for changes in birth and death rates to affect family sizes (because they first affect the generation of grandparents, and then the generation of parents, the generation of children, etc.)."
The study therefore highlights the burgeoning need for social support for the elderly, instead of relying on family, which a vast number of people do not yet have access to.
"Now, in our study we showed that families will also be older. In other words, the age gap between individuals and their relatives will also increase. This matters because it may increase the need for individuals to provide informal care to their older relatives," he said.
In a future where family may not be enough, ways to ensure the older population is cared for are needed, the researchers stressed.
"Our findings support the calls for more investment in childcare and old-age care to alleviate the burden of individuals aging with fewer kinship resources to rely on," the authors wrote in the paper.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about families? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Update 01/09/24, 11:54 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Diego Alburez-Gutierrez.
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Jess Thomson is a Newsweek Science Reporter based in London UK. Her focus is reporting on science, technology and healthcare. ... Read more
