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The effects of extended families and marital status on housing consumption by black female-headed households

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  • II. General Housing Conditions and Special Populations
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The Review of Black Political Economy

Abstract

This study examines factors affecting the housing consumption of households headed by black women. The investigation focuses particular attention on the extent to which marital status and household composition, especially extended family configurations, influence the quality of housing consumed. The specific measure of housing quality used in the study is crowdedness, proxied by the number of persons per room.

Analysis of data taken from the 1980 U.S. Census Public Use Sample reveals that female-headed extended households experience crowding disproportionately in comparison to other female-headed households. Marital status, age and location also significantly affect housing consumption. Young black female household heads who are separated and live in the South are particularly likely to reside in crowded conditions.

Improved labor market outcomes for household heads are found to be more effective in generating improvements in housing quality than increased transfer payments.

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Notes

  1. Cynthia Rexroat, “ The Declining Economic Status of Black Children: What Accounts for the Change?” Monograph prepared for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 1989.

  2. Wilhelmina A. Leigh, “ The ’Housing Quotient’ of Black Families,” in Harold E. Cheatham and James B. Steward (eds.),Black Families: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990), p. 71.

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  3. Wilhelmina A. Leigh,Shelter Affordability For Blacks. Crisis or Clamor? (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1982).

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  4. Leigh, “ The ’Housing Quotient’ of Black Families,” p. 72.

  5. The question of shelter affordability as it relates to blacks is addressed in Leigh,Shelter Affordability for Blacks. Crisis or Clamor?

  6. Leigh,Shelter Affordability for Blacks. Crisis or Clamor? p. 72.

  7. See for example Joyce Aschenbrenner, “Extended Families Among Black Americans,”Comparative Family Studies (1973), pp. 257-268; Andrew Billingsley,Black Families in White America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968); and Carol Stack,All Our Kin (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).

  8. David A. Macpherson and James B. Stewart, “ The Labor Supply and School Attendance of Black Women in Extended and Nonextended Households,”AEA Papers and Proceedings, May, 1989, pp. 71-74.

  9. See Sar Levitan, Martin Rein, and David Marwick,Work and Welfare Go Together (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1972).

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  10. Robert Hill and Lawrence Shackelford, “The Black Extended Family Revisited,”Urban League Review 1 (1975).

  11. See Walter R. Allen, “Class, Culture and Family Organization: The Effects of Class and Race on Family Structure in Urban America,”Journal of Comparative Family Studies 10 (1979), pp. 301–313; and Walter R. Allen and Reynolds Farley, “ The Shifting Social and Economic Tides of Black America, 1950-1980,”American Sociological Review 12 (1986), pp. 277-306.

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  12. Robert Hill, et al.Research on African-American Families: A Holistic Perspective. Assessment of the Status of African-Americans, Volume II (Boston: The William Monroe Trotter Institute, University of Massachusetts at Boston, 1989), p. 14.

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  13. Ibid, p. 15. Approximately 12 percent of black working mothers placed their children in formal day care centers.

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  14. Macpherson and Stewart, “ The Labor Supply and School Attendance of Black Women in Extended and Nonextended Households.”

  15. As a result of the 1980 Census, the designations for metropolitan areas were changed. The SMS A has been replaced by the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA), and Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA). For detailed definitions see Wilhelmina A. Leigh, “ Trends in the Housing Status of Black Americans Across Selected Metropolitan Areas ” (this issue), note 1.

  16. Complete data are available from the authors upon request.

  17. This figure is computed using the same supplemental results referred to in note 22. In this case the coefficient of AGE30EXT is irrelevant. The sum of the other two coefficients is .084. Dividing this figure by the coefficient of WAGEINC (-.0000092) yields an income deficit of $9,130.

  18. Leigh,Shelter Affordability, p. 18.

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Authors
  1. David Macpherson
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  2. James B. Stewart
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Macpherson, D., Stewart, J.B. The effects of extended families and marital status on housing consumption by black female-headed households. Rev Black Polit Econ 19, 65–81 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02895338

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