Two-home family situations of children and adults: observation and consequences for describing family patterns in France

Laurent Toulemon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Sophie Pennec, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

With the increasing diversity of family situations, many people – children as well as adults – now “usually” live in more than one dwelling. The aim of this paper is, first, to estimate the proportion of people living in two or more households, and second, to describe the consequences of these two-home situations on basic estimates of family situations based on “routine” surveys or censuses. Preliminary results are presented for France, while in the final paper a comparison will be made with Australia. Some 3.5% of children aged under 18 live in two or more dwellings, 2.2% share their time between both parents’ homes, and 1.3% live partly with their parents and partly away from home or at boarding school. When these situations are taken into account, the proportion of children not living with both parents falls from a biased estimate of 22.3% to 18.9%.