Temne Household Size and Composition: Rural Changes over Time and Rural-Urban Differences

The distinction between the household as a co-residing group of people who form a co-operating domestic unit and the family as a kinship group has become reasonably well established in the literature of anthropology (cf. Bender 1967; Bohannan I963: Chapters 5 and 6). Increasingly this same basic distinction has come to be used by demographers as well. In this article I discuss the size and composition of households among the Temne of the rural chiefdom of Kolifa Mayoso and the nearby provincial town of Magburaka, in central Sierra Leone, utilizing my own census data collected in I955 and I963.1 Essentially, I am concerned with changes between I955 and I963 in rural Kolifa Mayoso, and with rural-urban differences in I963 between Kolifa Mayoso and Magburaka town.