Patrilineal coresidence in urban China: a life course perspective

In this paper, we model histories of coresidence between two cohorts of urban Chinese couples, married during the Cultural Revolution and early market reform periods. Most research on coresidence pictures families cross‐sectionally, but nuclear households are a natural part of extended coresidence systems that prefer stem family arrangements. We study histories of coresidence to determine what predicts ever having coresided with the husband’s parents, comparing the predictive power of modernization theory to the impact of demographic change, the availability of household members, and the resources and needs of each generation. While married children’s needs for childcare do not propel them into coresidence, they strongly predict the likelihood of staying coresident.