Types of household, family life cycle and poverty in Costa Rica

Abstract

Over the last ten years, improvement in poverty conditions has stalled in Costa Rica, but there have been significant advances in aspects relating to the demographic transition. Poverty levels are holding around 20% of households below the poverty line, while mortality indicators have achieved a life expectancy of 78 years and fertility has reached historical replacement levels. This situation is suitable for conceptual and empirical studies to provide information regarding the relationship between the phenomenon of poverty and conditions of sociodemographic vulnerability still being felt by a significant proportion of the country’s households. This study is aimed at exploring problems of socio-demographic vulnerability in Costa Rica, starting with an analysis of the composition and changes in the poorest households by means of two key concepts: Type of Household and Family Life Cycle, which are operationalized in variables based on the information from the Household Surveys of 1987, 1994, and 2002. Household or family typologies (Household Type) refer to the composition of the familial and non-familial arrangements within each household, starting with kinship relations among household members, with regards to a reference person, which generally is the individual considered head of household. Family Life Cycle refers to the different phases or stages that family arrangements usually go through, from constitution of the initial family nucleus (couple with or without children), passing through different events of change according to the growth of the initial group and the ages of its members, until the nucleus is dissolved or dispersed into new nuclei and family arrangements.