The size and structure of residential families, Guatemala City, 1964

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Abstract
In a review of census data for the periods 1945–54 and 1955–63, Burch discloses an increasing tendency for average household sizes to cluster at five to six members for developing nations, compared to three to four for developed nations.1 Also, among developing nations he finds less than 50% of the population living in households containing three to six persons. This apparently contradicts Levy's general rule which prompted his study, that ‘for well over 50% of the members of ... all known societies in world history’ actual family size and composition have varied much less than would be expected, given ideal rules of residence which can vary from the classical extended family of Asian renown and European history to the small ‘isolated’ nuclear family of the modernized West.2